Reverse
by dontyouwannadance
Summary: Now don't you wish you could go back?
1. Chapter 1

**Hello again! I come bearing fanfic...and this time it's serious. I myself rather enjoy stories like this but I've found that most people don't, which is why I don't tend to write them very often... This story, however, I have high hopes for, and I'm pretty excited about this one. **

**I hope you enjoy this first chapter! Well...enjoy might be the wrong word, but you know what I mean. Let me know what you think. Reviews are a girl's best friend.**

It's Tuesday and all eyes are on me the second that I walk into Sikowitz's room. I ignore them but I know exactly why they're staring, and I'm starting to think that maybe they're right. Maybe I shouldn't have come.

There are too many empty chairs in the room and I struggle with choosing one. I usually sit in the center at the back of the room, but today there's a cluster of five empty chairs there and I don't particularly feel like singling myself out like that. I drag one of the chairs across the room and set it down next to Robbie. He doesn't have that stupid puppet sitting in his lap today and I almost ask him where Rex is, but I don't care enough to actually open my mouth. He looks at me sympathetically and I scowl at him, but a tiny part of me feels bad. Nobody in this room has a clue how I feel right now, except for maybe him.

Everybody is still watching me, so I pull my phone out of my pocket and focus on it, rather than my staring peers. The screen freezes when I try to unlock it, but my frustration is covered by the sound of Sikowitz's voice as he tries to start the lesson. I haven't looked at him yet and I'm only partly paying attention to what he's saying, but I can tell he doesn't want to be here either.

I try unlocking my stupid defective pearphone one more time and it slowly comes to life. A notification informs me that my phone was unable to send my last text message – one I'd tried sending Beck yesterday morning. It would have been nice to know _that_ sooner. I hit resend, and I start pressing down on different icons: email although I know that my inbox is empty; the weather app although I know it's raining and cold. A few seconds pass and now I'm just staring at the home screen, trying to pretend that I'm not here. I don't know what I'd rather be doing – would I feel any better if I was at home right now? Doubt it. – but I really just _don't_ want to be in class today. I'm tired and my head hurts and I just can't think today.

I close my eyes and figure that maybe falling asleep would be my best choice, but my phone vibrates and I make myself look at the screen. It's another notification, and this one is telling me that I missed a call – at 11:34 Thursday night. Yet another delayed notification. Before I can press down on it to see who I supposedly missed this call from, another notification pops up, telling me I have a voicemail. This one displays the name and number of the person the voicemail is from, and I stare at it for a moment in disbelief before I'm able to get up out of my seat and leave the room without bothering to give Sikowitz an excuse.

I sit down on the floor with my back to a locker just a few feet away from the door and hold the phone up to my ear with my trembling hand. A robotic voice takes its sweet time telling me all the details of my new message, and then there's a pause before the recording starts to play. I can't even listen to a complete sentence before I completely lose it and throw my phone across the hall. It hits the lockers on the other side, the back flies off, the battery pops out, and all the pieces go in different directions. I pull myself up, kick a locker as hard as I can, gather the pieces of my stupid cell phone and leave school, trying to convince myself that I'm not actually crying.

…

It's Wednesday and I decide not to go to school. I shouldn't have gone yesterday. Maybe tomorrow.

…

It's Thursday and I skip again. Cat has apparently decided to go, but she soon realizes that the rest of us aren't there and texts me. My phone seems to be working today so I actually receive the message on time.

"Why aren't you at school?"

There are a thousand reasons why I'm not at school right now. It's too empty, it's too different, I'm too crazy. My bed is far more appealing.

"I'm not ready." I text her back and set my phone down gently on the nightstand beside my bed. It's being nice to me so I figure I should return the favor. That would have been a nice lesson to learn sooner.

"We should go to lunch then!" Her exclamation point bothers me. In my head I can almost hear her squealing little voice shouting this. She sounds excited in my mind, and although I know that she's not, and her punctuation meant nothing, I still want to yell at her for not being as miserable as I am right now.

"I don't think so."

"Come on Jade, what else are you gonna do today?" She's right but I don't want to admit that. I woke up two hours ago and I've been lying in bed with the lights off ever since. I suppose I'll probably stay here for the rest of the day. I'll probably sit here and stare at the ceiling and the shadows and think and think and gradually make myself even more sick if I don't get out of here soon.

"Where?"

"Where what?" I'm pretty sure there's nobody on the planet more forgetful than Cat.

"Where do you want to have lunch?" I press down hard on my touch screen as if she can somehow feel my frustration on the other end.

"Oh! How about inside out burger?" Cat knows I don't really care for Inside Out Burger, but I lack the energy needed to come up with a better idea and agree to meet her there in an hour. The only problem is, it takes me an hour to get out of bed. I have a hard enough time just throwing my blankets off, so I don't bother with trying to look halfway decent and simply change my clothes before leaving. It's just Cat, after all.

Only it isn't just Cat.

I walk into the stupid Inside Out Burger and see Cat sitting at a corner booth…with Beck, Andre, Robbie, and Rex. I almost turn around and walk out right then. I didn't know it'd be the whole group. Well…almost the whole group. I thought it would just be Cat and I. Just Cat is bad enough – sometimes she irritates me to the point of wanting to gouge my eyes out. She's my friend and all, but she drives me insane. I agreed to this lunch, however, because I figured that if I was with Cat, then she would talk and talk about nothing and never shut up and I wouldn't have a second to think about anything. I can usually count on her for things like that.

I start to turn around to leave, but they all see me right away and wave me over. I sigh and slowly walk over there, sliding into the space beside Beck without a word. They all stare at me for a moment, before exchanging glances.

"You look like barf." Rex insults me right away. I don't know how it hasn't gotten through to Robbie that he never gets away with insulting me and therefore it isn't a good idea to do it.

"Rex!" Robbie chastises his dumb puppet as usual but it's useless. I glare at them for a moment, but then I realize that Rex is right, and suddenly I don't feel so much like hurling him across the restaurant.

"This is weird…" Andre spits out a watered-down version of what I was thinking.

"Yeah…" Robbie mumbles, coupled with everyone else's nods.

"It seems…wrong…for us to be here." Beck confesses as he puts his arm around me. That seems wrong too, and I move away from him. Everybody notices and suddenly they look even more uncomfortable.

I don't want to be here. I really don't want to be here. I'd rather go home and think about it by myself. Being here with them makes it even more real and I can't even _hope_ to think about anything else.

"I just can't believe Tori's…" Cat drops the end of her sentence, unable to say the word out loud before her eyes fill with tears.

"Dead." I finish it for her. Everybody looks at me, shocked. Somehow the words that come out of my mouth still manage to surprise them after all this time.

"Jade…" Beck softly says my name and rests his hand on my shoulder. I move away from him again, this time climbing out of the booth.

"What?" I ask. "She's dead. She's _dead. __She __died. _Tori is dead and that's not going to change. We can sit here and all have lunch together without her like we did for two years before her, but things aren't like that anymore. She was here and now she's not, and this lunch thing isn't going to work out." I grab my bag from the seat beside Beck and try to leave before I make a fool out of myself and start crying, but Andre stops me. I want to keep walking but my body involuntarily turns to face him.

"Are you seriously gonna talk to us like that?" I don't move. "Did it ever cross your mind that maybe you weren't exactly _nice_ to her? You treated her like crap. She came to _us _so she could complain about _you. _You've got no right to talk to us like you're the only one grieving. We know she's dead. We don't need you to remind us." They all stare at me, except for Robbie, who is looking at Andre, completely horrified.

"You're right." I admit, scrunching up my face in an effort to stop myself from breaking in front of them. "I'm going home now."

As soon as I turn around the tears break free and I leave the building as fast as I possibly can without running. I can tell when I reach the door that Beck is behind me, but some part of me kind of hopes he'll just decide to turn around and go back to the table and not bother with talking to me.

"Jade." Great. "Jade wait a minute." I stop by my car and turn to look at him, suddenly conscious of my hideous crying face. "That was kind of harsh, but you know he's right… You didn't need either of us to tell you that though."

"Oh great observation, Beck. Really, you know me so well." I spit out the words with heavy sarcasm and immediately regret it when his face drops.

"Come here." He holds his arms out and I just stare at him. "Come here." He repeats himself.

"No." He shrugs and moves toward me, wrapping his arms around me so tightly I can't move to get him off of me. He smells so strongly of laundry detergent, and it reminds me of my bed, where I would rather be right now.

"Beck!" I struggle a little but he doesn't let go, so I give in and just bury my face in his shirt and cry like a pathetic loser in the parking lot of Inside Out Burger.

"Tori knew you didn't hate her." He tells me as he rubs my back. I've been trying to believe this. Tori was smart enough to realize that. She knew me. She knew this is just the way that I am. I'm a mean person by nature, but I never hated her any more than I hate anything else. She knew that. She had to. She just liked to play along sometimes and pretend that it bothered her…or at least that's what I've been telling myself over the past week.

"I know." I mutter, turning my face just as he loosens his grip on me.

"You don't need to feel guilty. It's not your fault."

"Beck." I sniffle and reach up to wipe my eyes. "Never be a therapist. You would suck at that." In reality he has been successful in calming me down, but I can't say that out loud, and I surely can't thank him.

"Well I tried…and it's true." He takes a step back and shrugs. "When are you going back to school?" He pushes his hair back as he asks me.

"Probably Monday."

"Me too."

"Ummm…" I tuck my hair behind my ear and suddenly words aren't coming out of my mouth. My hands shake a little as I try to find a way to say this without deeply offending him, because for some reason I care about hurting people's feelings these days. "I would really rather not see you for a while. I don't want to talk or look at you any more than I have to right now. Not just you…all of you." I look through the window of the restaurant at Cat, Robbie, and Andre, who are still sitting in the corner booth, watching us. "It just reminds me that there's only five of us…uhh…five and a half…now and I won't get over it if I have to look at you guys every day because there's just a big _hole_ in our group now and I know we weren't really even that close, but the thought that she's not coming back just makes me…_oh __my __god __I__'__m __losing __my __mind.__"_ The tears that have been fighting to return win again, and I start bawling my eyes out right there in front of him, with the others watching me through the window. He reaches out to grab my hand but doesn't hug me this time.

"I understand." He squeezes my hand in his and tries to turn me toward my car. "At least let me drive you home?"

"Yeah." I mumble, now just holding my wrists up to my eyes like they're drain plugs and will help in any way to stop me from crying like a little baby. I end up in the passenger seat of the car somehow and by the time Beck drives out of the parking lot, I've stopped crying, for the time being. My lungs are burning and I can't see a thing and my nose is running and I feel and look absolutely disgusting, but I set myself aside for a moment and look at Beck. He's keeping a straight face, but I can tell how hard he's trying by the way that he keeps scrunching his nose. I've been looking at him for maybe 15 seconds by now, and he's already done it twice. He's squeezing the steering wheel hard enough to turn his knuckles white. He always drives like that, but I can tell somehow that he's squeezing it a little harder than usual.

"Tell me a joke." I ask him softly, and he releases his grip on the steering wheel to look at me.

"A joke?"

"Yeah. A long one, a short one, a dirty one, a clean one. Just a joke. You can tell me a knock-knock joke if you want."

"Okay. Well, ummm… Why do ducks have webbed feet?" He looks at me as if he expects me to answer. "To stamp out fires. Why do elephants have flat feet?" He halfheartedly finishes, "To stamp out burning ducks."

"That's stupid." My voice comes out in a nasty tone I didn't intend to use on him.

"God, Jade, I'm an actor, not a comedian."

"Sorry." I mumble, looking out the window. "I was just trying to… Never mind. I don't know what I was trying to do but I'm sorry I did it." He's silent for a while as we drive down the road. I don't recognize anything we pass, but then again I can't really see it either. Everything is a giant blur, just like the last week has been.

"Actually, _I'm_ sorry." Beck apologizes as he pulls into my driveway. "You were just trying to lighten things up a little… I shouldn't have been so defensive." I stare at him for a moment, but can't come up with anything to say, so I spit out another uncharacteristic apology.

"No, I'm sorry. It was my fault."

When did we get like this? We're talking like we're strangers who accidentally bumped carts at the grocery store, instead of two people who have _loved_ each other for _three years._

Do I still love him? Do I feel anything at all? I don't know. My head doesn't work anymore. I feel like my insides have been scooped out and replaced with sand. Like some redneck hunting enthusiast is about to mount me on the wall in his living room above the TV so he can admire his shitty work while he watches NASCAR and drinks a Bud Light.

I can't even get out of the car. My feet don't move. My mouth quit working so I can't even speak.

I'm tired and I want to go back to bed, but when Beck helps me inside I ask him to stay. I really don't want him to, but I have no control over my body anymore and I can't resist asking him. He says yes, he can stay for a little while, but I can tell that he'd rather not. He's never been a very good liar - that's why he never does it. I wish I had been cursed like that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello again! Muchas gracias for reading and/or reviewing the first chapter. I'm glad somebody besides me liked it. :)**

It's Friday and I wake up with Beck in my bed. It's not that this is really much of a rarity – he stays over all the time. I'd be here alone all the time if he didn't. My problem with this situation, however, is that I don't completely remember ending up here. What did I do after we came inside? It's all a blur. My whole life is dissolving faster than I can comprehend it.

Beck has his bare chest pressed to my back and his face is nestled into the crook of my neck. Every time he breathes out, a tiny strand of my hair flies up into my periphery and then disappears again. For a moment I think that he might still be asleep, but then he wraps his arms around me and touches his lips behind my ear. His skin is so hot, and a tiny part of me wants him to stay just to keep me warm. The second he opens his mouth though, I know he has to leave.

"Good morning." He whispers in a happy pre-"remembering that the world sucks" tone.

"I didn't mean for you to stay the night." I climb out of bed, immediately freezing, and go straight to my dresser without looking at him.

"Oh…uhh…sorry?"

"It's not your fault." I mutter a halfhearted apology as I pull on a camisole, but he doesn't seem to buy it.

"Well, I should go…" I struggle putting on a pair of sweatpants and then turn around just as he's zipping his jeans. His eyes stay locked on mine for a moment and I suddenly remember how he ended up at my house in the first place.

"Your truck's still at the burger place, isn't it?"

"No, I was with Andre yesterday, so he drove." He starts buttoning his shirt, and I could tell him he's off by two buttons but I don't say a word until after he notices it. He sighs and starts to unbutton it so he can start over.

"I should drive you home then."

"You don't have to." I just give him a look. As if he really expects me to make him walk. He's already guilted me into it.

I grab the first jacket I can find, find my car keys in a pile of yesterday's clothes on the floor, and lead the way outside. Unfortunately – and surprisingly – my mother happens to still be home when we reach the kitchen, and I don't make it any further.

"Jade," She says my name in a tone that suggests that she's mad. She hasn't seen me in three days – she always manages to leave before I wake up and come back after I go to bed – so who knows what it could be. "Can I talk to you for a second?" She ends her question with a forced smile aimed in Beck's direction.

"What? I kind of have stuff to do." I grumble, earning myself a frown from her.

"It'll only take a minute." She promises, again looking at Beck. I turn to give him the keys, wondering what I could have possibly done that she couldn't chastise me for in front of him. She's never been the type of mother to wait until a guest was gone to reprimand me for anything.

Once the door closes behind Beck, she sets her hand on the empty bar stool beside her, inviting me to take a seat. I humor her and sit down without arguing.

"Jade," She repeats my name once again, rather than just getting to the point. One minute, my ass. "I know that…well, I don't really know how you're feeling right now, but I do know you're hurting, and that I haven't been around enough to comfort you…_and_ that I've never really been around enough throughout your life for you to even consider coming to me…but you know I'm here if you ever do need me, right?" I nod, though I'd never consider taking her up on such an offer. "You're my first priority. I can skip work." Pretty words, but we both know work is her first priority, and she can skip me.

"Is that it?"

"No, not yet. I, umm…Jade." Again with the name. It's like she thinks it's some magic word that can heal the relationship we don't really have. I love my mom, but that will never happen. We're never going to be the type of mother and daughter who go shopping together, or go to movies together, or, someday in the future, call each other every day. "I know you're looking to Beck for comfort right now, and I just want to make sure you're being careful."

"Oh my God, Mom. Don't you think we've had this discussion enough times?"

"Well obviously we should have had it sooner." She spits out this sentence in the bitterest tone I've ever heard her use, and stares at me for a moment before I decide I need to get out of here.

"Beck needs to get home." I excuse myself from the room and make my way to the driveway, where my car is running with Beck asleep in the passenger seat. I knock on the driver's side window to wake him up before I even bother to open the door, and even when I've started the engine and am backing out of the driveway, he still hasn't bothered to look at me.

"Your mom hates me." I laugh and it feels weird on my lips.

"No she doesn't."

"Yes she does. She doesn't even respect me enough to ask for privacy. She just kept giving me the stink eye."

"She was _not_ giving you the stink eye." I mutter, reaching over to turn on the heat because I didn't bother to put on shoes and my toes are frozen. "She was giving you her 'please leave so I can complain to my daughter about you' look."

"Oh, so she _was_ talking about me." He pauses. "How does that support your argument at all?"

"Alright, maybe she does hate you…but she didn't always. She really liked you at first. For a long time, actually. Now she kind of hates me too though, so I wouldn't feel too special."

"I wonder what made her change her mind." He mumbles. We both know exactly how to answer that question.

Beck sits silently in the passenger seat of my car for the rest of the way to his house, and while I've gotten used to him acting this way whenever I drive – my driving him places is a threat to his masculinity or something moronic like that, and it makes him feel uncomfortable – I kind of wish he would say something so I could stop thinking about the past.

I stop my car beside his trailer and turn to look at him. He just stares back at me, blinking once before he opens his mouth to say something. No words come out, so I lean over the console and kiss him. This will most likely be the last time this happens for a while, and when I pull away from him, the look on his face shows that he knows that.

"I love you" He says, placing his hand over mine. "but I'll give you your space. You know where to find me." He gives me a weak smile and I can literally feel a pain in my chest. I almost want to take back what I said earlier, but I know that once I leave and I stop thinking about him, I'll start thinking about Tori, and this little heartache I'm feeling now will be nothing compared to the feeling I'll get when I go to school and I sit down at that lunch table with them and she's not there because she's never _going_ to be here, there, or anywhere ever again and she will never ever know that she was really the closest thing to a best friend I have. _Had_.

I'm crying so hard now that my body is shaking and I can't even speak. Beck hesitantly leans over the console between us and wraps his arms around me. He stays like that for a while, even after I've stopped sobbing into the collar of his shirt. He just holds me. He smells like my room…or maybe my room has always smelled like him. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

"Thanks for at least trying to understand."

"You gonna be okay?" He grimaces and then apologizes. "I'm sorry. That was a stupid question. We're gonna be alright though, right? Eventually? We'll get through this. You're gonna be fine, I'm gonna be fine...we're all gonna be okay."

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I'll be okay. This kind of stuff happens to people all the time and they get through it, right?"

"Yeah, they do."

"So we will too. I'll be okay." I don't really believe that I will ever feel better, but I keep repeating this mantra, hoping to convince myself.

"Well you probably want to get home. You're not even wearing shoes." He taps my nose with his index finger, his way of reprimanding me for my bad habit of driving barefoot. He's always telling me how "risky and irresponsible" it is, but this time he just touches my nose and starts to get out of the car without chastising me. "Oh!" He's halfway out but he stops to look at me one last time. "Are you going tonight?"

"Yeah, I think so." I answer him softly. He just nods and removes himself the rest of the way.

Beck doesn't go inside until I've left his driveway, and he waves as I pull away, but I don't bother waving back and just start to drive home. Rather than actually go there, however, I end up passing my turn and driving and driving and driving until I end up in the parking lot of Bed, Bath, and Yonder. I wander inside, ignoring the poor acne-covered meathead at the door whose only job is to unnecessarily stand by the door and greet people, passing the kitchen section and the bathroom section, and weaving through the bedroom section until I reach the farthest corner of the store, which is for the most part pretty empty. I climb onto one of the bed displays and lie flat on my back, sticking with my ritual of coming here every time something goes wrong.

…

It was a Sunday when I showed up at Tori's house completely out of my mind. I stood on the patio for ten minutes without having even come close to working up the courage to ring the doorbell. She was my only option. I couldn't tell anyone else. I definitely couldn't tell Beck – not yet. Andre and Robbie would never in a million years want to hear about my current predicament, and I certainly couldn't count on Cat to keep it a secret. So it was Tori. Again. As much as I hated having to come to her, she was reliable. She wouldn't turn me away. Tori was too nice for that.

Before I had a chance to decide between running or knocking, the door opened and Tori herself walked out. She had her phone in one hand, with her headphones in her ears and the volume turned up loud enough for me to hear it – she was listening to Katy Perry. Typical Tori.

She walked over to the sidewalk, humming loudly, bent down to get the newspaper, reached into the mailbox for the mail, and came skipping back to the house, reaching the patio without having noticed me sitting there. She opened the door, stepped inside, and then when she turned around to shut the door she finally saw me sitting on the bench across from her. She pulled her headphones out of her ears and started winding them around her phone as she stepped back outside.

"Jade, what are you-" She stuffed her phone into her pocket and looked up again, finally noticing the state I was in. "What's wrong?"

"You're good at fixing things." I said to her, reaching into my bag and pulling out a little white stick. I held it in front of her face and she stepped closer, her eyes widening when she noticed the little plus sign. "Fix this."


	3. Chapter 3

It's Friday night and I am standing in front of my closet, wondering how I could own so much black but have absolutely nothing to wear to a visitation. As hard as it may be to believe, I don't actually go to many events like this, so I don't have anything to wear. Each outfit I pull out has a happy memory attached to it. I couldn't wear any of this to anybody's visitation, especially Tori's.

Mom's staying late at work again so the house is empty, but I still cautiously tip-toe into her bedroom and open the door to her giant walk-in closet. Everything inside is organized by color, from short sleeve to long sleeve. She's obsessive when it comes to organizing her things. Her closet, her desk, every drawer in this house. Everything is arranged by color, size, the alphabet. She absolutely hates how I'm always messing her things up – and she always notices. She'll know I took her clothes, but for an occasion like this, I don't think she'll mind.

I slowly pick through her black dresses, one by one, remembering the last time she wore each one. Grandma's funeral, the big showcase three years ago – the last time she actually made it to one – the day she and dad signed their divorce papers, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of the week after that. The one on the end I don't remember her ever wearing. It looks a bit small for her anyway, so I pull it out and hold it up to my body. It's got a deep V-neck, although there's some black lace over top, disguising it as a scoop-neck. The sleeves are tight and stop at the elbow, and it falls just above the knees. I yank my sweatpants down and pull my top off, leaving my clothes on the floor as I try the dress on. It fits me almost perfectly, which makes me wonder when my mother bought this, as she weighs about fifteen pounds more than I do, and has maintained that weight for as long as I can remember.

I almost look too good in this dress. Does that make it inappropriate for this kind of event? Are you supposed to look good at a visitation? I don't want to look bad. That would be an insult. If I look good, it looks like I care, right? Not that I really need to _look_like I care. The only people who will actually see me are the ones whose opinions don't matter. I'm going for Tori…and partially for myself.

I leave the closet and go to Mom's jewelry armoire, figuring that if I'm going to borrow her dress I might as well go all the way. I rip the first thing I see - a long silver chain with a deep purple pendant hanging from it – off its hook and hang it around my neck before looking in the full-body mirror on the wall beside the closet door for the first time. I try to think of the last time my legs were this exposed and come up empty-handed. The green nail polish – one can only take so much black – on my toes is chipping and my feet are still dirty from earlier today. It hadn't occurred to me that Bed Bath and Yonder wasn't exactly a sanitary place when I wandered in there barefoot a few hours ago. The manager who had kicked me out was much more concerned with me not wearing shoes to remember that he'd banned Tori and I from his store six months ago for repeatedly getting caught on the bed displays.

I need shoes. Unfortunately my mother's feet are a size bigger than mine, so I wander back to my own bedroom, sit down in the doorway of my closet, and start digging through my shoes. When did I get so many boots? I could probably buy a house in Hawaii with the money I'd make selling these on Ebay.

At the bottom of the giant, messy, terribly disorganized pile I find a pair of black ankle boots, which I have to squeeze my feet into, since I haven't worn them since freshman year. They're probably the most visitation-appropriate shoes I've got, so they'll have to do. I stand up, check my hair in the mirror, and leave. When I pull into Tori's driveway (I thought having visitations at your house was something people only did in movies, but I've been proved wrong.) I notice the time and realize the visitation started two hours ago. All of my friends have probably come and gone, and I'm going to walk in there and see two dozen people I've never seen before in my life. I don't want to get out of the car.

Ten minutes later I stumble into the house – it turns out it's hard to walk in shoes that are a size too small – and the first thing I see is the back of Beck's head. He's wearing a solid black shirt and khaki pants. Since when does Beck own a single pair of khakis? He starts to turn around and I duck behind a tall man standing by the couch. I don't want him to see me. I feel so out of place. I'm just a little child playing dress-up in her mother's clothes, showing up at the visitation for somebody who died believing I hated her. People like me aren't supposed to go to these things. People like me aren't supposed to care.

Beck takes a couple steps toward the back porch and I notice he's following Andre. Robbie's right outside the door, waiting for them, and Cat is nowhere to be seen. She doesn't have a very long attention span and doesn't deal very well with these kind of things, so she's probably gone home by now.

Tori's dad is sitting on the couch with a blank look on his face. A woman who resembles Mrs. Vega – perhaps her sister? Tori used to talk about her aunt a lot. – is beside him, patting him on the back while wearing a very similar facial expression. Trina is sitting on the floor at her father's feet, her face bright red from crying. I don't know if I've ever seen her cry. That girl has the thickest skin out of everybody I have ever met in my life. I suppose you'd have to, if you had such an irritating and unappealing personality.

There are half a dozen strangers standing in the kitchen and a few kids from school are standing by the piano, on top of which is one large photo of Tori and several smaller ones – I recognize, from this distance, one of the small ones as the group photo of our "Ping-Pong team." – as well as a large vase full of multi-colored flowers, a guest book, and a stack of those depressing little program things. The teacher I would have had for Health class if I hadn't skipped every day is next to the stairs, talking to a man I don't recognize as Sikowitz until a moment later. His hair is brushed, and he's dressed very much like Beck is – black shirt, khaki pants. He's actually wearing shoes, which is the biggest surprise of all. He sees me, still hiding from Beck behind the tall stranger, and nods. I do some sort of stupid half-wave in response, which luckily he doesn't see.

Before I have an anxiety attack or embarrass myself any further I go upstairs, where it's quiet. There's a buzzing coming from downstairs, but up here the lights are off, the doors are all closed, and there's not a soul in sight. I yank my too-small shoes off and carry them down to the end of the hall, where the door to Tori's room is. I shouldn't be up here at all, let alone going inside a dead girl's bedroom. This is inappropriate in so many ways.

I open the door and realize I'm not the first one to come up here. Tori's mother is sitting on the edge of the bed, sobbing. She doesn't notice I'm there at first, and I start to close the door and back away, but she looks up as I'm backing away.

"Jade." She says, her voice weak. I'm partially surprised she remembers my name. "You can come in."

"Oh, I was just, ummm… It's really crowded down there so I thought I'd come up here and, uhh…"

"Can I hug you?" She asks me as she stands up. Normally I would say no right away. I'm no fan of hugs, and I've always reserved them for people who mean a lot to me. Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it – I don't give them out very often. Mrs. Vega, however, looks so heartbroken that even I can't deny her. "I've been up here all night," she says, "so I haven't seen any of Tori's friends yet. You were all so important to her, and I just…can I hug you?" I step toward her and hold my arms out. She grabs a hold of me and starts sobbing into my hair, and then I'm crying too. I don't even know Mrs. Vega that well, but I stand there in her daughter's room with her for several minutes, crying into the sleeve of her shirt until she lets go of me, mumbles something about going downstairs, and leaves the room, shutting the door behind her.

I stand still for a moment, unsure about what has just happened. I set my shoes down at the foot of Tori's bed and walk over to her desk. Everything on it is covered in dust. I sit in her chair and run my hand over her laptop, leaving a cleared stripe. I look at her books – she's got a lot of romance novels. I pull a couple off the shelf and notice how new they look. She probably never had a chance to read these. Beside the romance novels are some realbooks. Wintergirls, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Virgin Suicides, Lord of the Flies, Never Let Me Go, The Time Traveler's Wife, My Sister's Keeper, The Pact, The Bell Jar, The Lovely Bones, Go Ask Alice… She's got a lot of sad books. A lot of books in general. She had never seemed like much of a reader to me. These books - I can tell just from looking at the spines – have been read a lot, but they're still covered in way too much dust to have been touched anytime recently. There's a bookmark sticking out two-thirds into Wintergirls, so I pull the small turquoise book off the shelf and flip it open.

I read out loud the sentence next to my thumb.

"Once the sleeping pill straps my arms and legs down to the mattress, she opens my skull and rips out the wiring. She screams holes in my brain and pukes blood down my throat."

"That's morbid." I whisper to nobody in particular. I flip it over and read the back, as this is one of the few books on her shelf that I haven't read. Normally I would just take it – she probably wouldn't notice – but even _I_ am opposed to stealing from dead girls. I'll have to get my own copy sometime. When I start to put the book back, I notice a piece of paper sticking out where it used to be. The paper is a crumpled page protruding from a small notebook. I pull the notebook out, replacing it with Wintergirls. It's a plain black book, maybe a hundred pages thick. I'm invading Tori's privacy and I feel bad, in a way, but I open it to the first page anyway. It's covered in drawings. The next page, more doodles. The third page looks like half of an old algebra assignment, but the fourth page – that's where it gets good.

On the right side of the page is a disturbingly accurate drawing of Robbie. In a fancy, sickeningly girly script alongside it is his name, with a bulleted list below it.

_- Robbie is awkward. There's no other way to put it. How else do you describe a boy who carries a puppet around with him all the time, without using words from Jade's vocabulary?_

_- Despite his awkwardness, though, Robbie is sweet. He always means well – except for that Robarazzi thing…_

_-__I__'__m__not__entirely__sure__what__'__s__wrong__with__him__but__I__'__m__finding__it__easy__to__ignore__his__problems,__much__like__I__'__ve__learned__to__live__with__my__own._"

It reads like some sort of amateur, wannabe psychiatrist's case notes. I flip the book and see Cat's face drawn in the corner. Her list is a little longer. Beck is on the backside, with Andre on the one across from him. On the back of Andre, page number eight, is me, but there isn't just a little list on this page. There are paragraphs. Big paragraphs, scrunched onto the page in tiny, barely legible writing. It carries on to the back, ending halfway down. I hesitantly turn back to Cat – I want to read my page, but it's always best to start at the beginning. Just as I flip back to the start, however, I hear the door creak and quickly shove the notebook into my bag. Trina is standing there, staring at me. Her face isn't as red as before, but she looks pale and all her makeup has been wiped off.

"What are you doing?" She asks, leaning into the room without putting a foot over the threshold.

"I, uh…Tori borrowed something from me a few weeks ago and I really needed it back…I figured I'd just… I'll go now." I grab my shoes and push past her, making my way through the crowd and out to my car as fast as I can.

…

It was a Tuesday when Tori showed up at my locker the second our last class of the day let out. I'd been too distraught on Sunday to even tell her what my problem was, but she had deduced from the positive pregnancy test and the few words I was able to get out through my sobbing what I was there for. She had taken me inside the house, sat down beside me on her couch, and offered to call and make me a doctor's appointment – which she then did only a few seconds later. Tori had taken my reaching out for help once again as a sign that we were best friends forever or something, so she had decided to accompany me to my appointment. I was a bit preoccupied to bother with correcting her, so here she was, standing at my locker, tapping her toe about as fast as my heart was beating.

"You ready?" She asked, her voice nearly drowned out by the sound of her foot.

"Yes."

"You scared?"

"Yes." I slammed my locker shut and closed my eyes. I knew that the chances I'd hear anything different from what the test had already told me were too small to even hope, but I was trying to be optimistic for a change.

Tori took my hand and led me out to my car, prying my keys out of my hand when I tried to get into the driver's seat.

"I'll drive." She said, opening the door. I frowned at her, too nervous to open my mouth and argue with her. "I said I'd help you Jade. I meant that."

We sat in the car for several minutes in silence, neither of us wanting to leave quite yet. Other students were running around and driving out of the parking lot behind us, but inside my car, Tori and I just sat there, staring at each other.

"You know…" She mumbled, reaching out and grabbing my hand. I pulled it away, but she took it again. "No matter what happens, you have five people who love you and support you. Well…five and a half." She smiled and patted my back before turning to the wheel. Forcing the keys into the ignition, Tori tried to start my car, but of course, it didn't start on the first try. She tried again, and got the same result.

"Try it again." I mumbled, "Third time's the charm, right?" She twisted the key again and the engine finally turned over.

"Ready?" She gave me a hopeful, yet pathetic smile.

"No. Take me home. I'm not going."

"Yes you are."

"No I'm not." She ignored me that time and drove out of the parking lot, nearly blowing the stop sign due to her inexperience driving my car.

Half an hour later, we sat together in the corner of the unfamiliar waiting room at the office of the doctor that Tori had made me an appointment with. It didn't occur to me at the time how strange it was that she knew the name of this particular kind of doctor. I'd just gone along with whatever she said because I was too convinced that my life was over to question her.

A couple young women and a few other teenage girls were scattered throughout the room, and I swear the girl sitting directly across the room from me had been my best friend in middle school. She made eye contact with me for a second and raised her eyebrows before turning away.

There were half a dozen of those creepy Anne Geddes photographs around the room, which certainly didn't have any sort of calming effect. I would rather not look at a framed picture of a baby poking its fat, ugly, little face out of a hole in an egg, especially while I'm sitting in a gynecologist's office.

Tori's face was pointed at the magazine in her lap, but as she flipped through it I could tell she was watching me. Who could blame her though? I was hyperventilating just sitting there. My breathing was loud enough for the whole city to hear it.

"What are you gonna do about your parents?" She questioned rather apprehensively.

"My mom already knows." I told her, closing my eyes. Tori reached out and pried my fingers off the armrest of my chair, squeezing them between both of her hands. "She walked in on me taking the test."

"Well you're still alive…that's a good sign, right?"

"I guess." I paused and opened my eyes. "I'm not telling my dad. He'd probably just tell me that my stupid, pointless dreams are now completely out of my reach."

"He'd be wrong." She reassured me, letting go of my hand just as a nurse opened a door across the room and called my name.

"We'll see."

I returned to the waiting room nearly an hour later, surprised that I could even remember how to walk. I was too shocked and terrified to even be concerned with the way I'd just been violated. My life was over, simple as that.

"I'm guessing you didn't get good news." Tori said, meeting me in the middle of the room. I just shook my head, afraid that if I opened my mouth I'd throw up. She opened the door for me and set her hand on my shoulder as we walked outside.

"I know you probably think your life is over right now," she told me, her hand sliding down my arm and latching onto my hand as I started walking faster than her, "but this isn't the end of the world, you know? You can-" I shoved my heavy bag, full of pamplets from the doctor, into Tori's hands and jerked away from her so I could vomit in the bushes. She just bent down beside me and held my hair back without a word.

At that exact moment, Tori Vega became my best friend.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Hopefully you're all enjoying the story still. You made it to the end of this chapter so that's a good sign. :)<strong>_

**_Thanks for reading up to this point! And a big thanks in advance to those of you who are about to click the lovely little review button..._**


	4. Chapter 4

It's Saturday and all I do is sleep.

…

It's Sunday and I don't remember doing anything at all.

…

It's Monday and I'm sitting in my car in the school parking lot. I'm here. Is that enough?

The clock changes from 7:58 to 7:59 and I grab a hold of the door handle. I get out of the car, cross the parking lot, and walk into the school without making eye contact with a single person. Maybe if nobody talks to me today I'll be alright.

"Jade!" Great. "Jade, can I talk to you for a second?" Andre jogs up behind me and leans against Robbie's locker.

"No." I say quietly, concentrating on my lock.

"But it's important!" He exclaims. I don't say a word. I don't move. My hand is stuck to the lock and I suddenly don't remember my combination, or even how to breathe.

Andre waves his hand in front of my face.

"Is it really?" I ask coldly, having still not seen his face.

"Yeah, actually. Do you have a minute?"

11-34-19. My combination finally comes to me and I start spinning the lock.

"I don't know. I could die any second. Maybe I do, maybe I don't."

"Jade…" He whispers roughly as I yank my locker door open.

"You know what, Andre?" He looks surprised when I finally turn to him. "In the time it's taking you to convince me to listen to you, you probably could have already told me whatever it is that's so important. Twice."

"Right." He nods as I reach inside my locker. "Well, it's about what I said on Thursday." He stops, as if he expects me to say anything. "I umm…I was kind of out of line, I guess. And what I said wasn't completely true." He's silent for a moment. "You know, about you making Tori miserable?"

"Yes, Andre, I remember what you told me. I'm not retarded." He looks offended for a moment, but then he continues.

"Right, well…I mean… She would be so mad that I'm telling you this, but what's she gonna do, right?" He looks horrified that he said that. "Uhh, I mean … Well anyway, she did sometimes complain about you to me…that was true… but it wasn't really…like that. Tori actually…"

"God, Andre, do you have a speech impediment? Spit it out!"

"Right. Sorry. It's just Tori would murder me if she knew I was telling you this. She would literally kill me. I would be dead in a second. She told me she'd make me pay if I ever told anyone, especially you, but she really can't now, and she wouldn't want you to think she'd died believing you two had some sort of mutual hate relationship going on, you know-"

"I don't have time for this." Maybe this lack of speaking-ability thing is Andre's way of dealing, but it's getting seriously annoying.

"Shewasinlovewithyou." He spits out six words in one, loud enough for the whole hall to hear it. A couple people stare at us for a second, before the look on my face scares them away.

"She was what?"

"She-"

"No, I know what you said. I can hear. She was…" I lower my voice, even though the hall has emptied. "_She __was __in _love _with __me?_…Why?"

"I don't know. I wondered the same thing." I smack him hard on the chest just because it seems like the right thing to do.

"Ow!" He frowns at me and continues speaking. "_I __asked __her __that __question_" He stresses the first half of his sentence while giving me a dirty look, "and she didn't know the answer either."

"Oh. Well…" I don't know what to say now. "I need to get to class." I excuse myself and walk off without closing my locker or taking anything with me. I hear a click as Andre softly closes my locker for me and goes to class.

I notice now all the posters up on the walls, with Tori's face plastered all over them. There's a huge banner on the wall above her locker - which has been covered in flowers – showing her smiling face on one side and a series of photos from her first showcase on the other side. "RIP TORI VEGA" it says in a massive font in the middle. Surrounding that is a huge amount of things students had to say about her, written – or for the most part, scribbled – in Sharpie.

This is how you can tell that she was special. Students at Hollywood Arts unfortunately die in car accidents a lot, but they get little plaques on the wall, and sometimes they get a stupid scholarship named after them. We have an incredibly boring memorial assembly at the end of nearly every year to honor a student – or students – who died during the school year. With Tori though, the whole school is mourning. There are posters and pictures everywhere. There's a pile of rotting roses and small framed photos of her on the floor below her locker like some sort of shrine. She had talent and a lot of potential, despite whatever I may have told her, and everybody can agree on one thing: We've suffered a big loss here.

I pull my eyes away from the wall and walk straight to the bathroom down the hall. I set my bag down on the floor beside one of the sinks and stand in front of the mirror.

"She loved me." When I say it out loud it sounds much better. "She was in love with me?" I stare into the mirror as I question why she would do a thing like that.

I'm not the most observant person in the world, but I'm no idiot. I knew Tori had a crush on me within seconds of her figuring it out herself. She had such an obvious need for my approval and affection, I'm sure everybody else knew too. At the time I hadn't thought much of it. I used it against her, no doubt about it. I taunted her all the time, without ever letting it slip officially that I knew just because it was fun. It wasn't that big of a deal. It was a game. I played with her feelings because it made me feel better. So she had a little girl crush. So what? Don't we all, to some extent, have one of those at some point in our lives?

I thought she'd gotten over it. I had never, ever imagined that it could be more than just a little crush. She _loved _me. She was _in __love _with me. I can only imagine how agonizing that must have been for her. Poor girl.

I sit down on the floor, ignoring the voice in my head reminding me how dirty it is. I don't care about germs anymore, obviously. Maybe I'll get sick and I can go apologize to Tori in person for how much I tortured her.

I don't feel right. I haven't felt right in so long. I'm not me right now. I'm not supposed to feel this bad for this long. I should be over it. So she used to be my best friend and now she's dead. So what? People die all the time in the most boring ways. We move on.

Why

can't

I?

I feel my phone in my back pocket and yank it out, running my finger over the power button before pressing it. The voicemail I'd been unable to listen to the last time I was here has come to mind and now I'm curious. I want to know what she said, so I open my voicemail inbox, type in my password, and set the phone down on the floor a couple feet in front of me, pushing the speaker button before closing my eyes.

"Jade…" Her voice echoes through the bathroom. There's a long pause after that, but I can tell just from that one word that she was upset when she left me this message.

"I was hoping you'd answer your phone. I don't want to tell you this in a voicemail, but I guess I don't have a choice." She pauses again, and then she starts crying. "I'm sorry." She repeatedly apologizes for crying, her voice getting softer each time. "I just… I miss you a lot. And I…well… My heart is beating so fast right now. I'm so scared to tell you this. I'm afraid you'll be mad at me or disgusted or… I just… It's now or never, right? If something happens, I want you to know that…that I love you." There's another pause in the message, and just then the door of the handicap stall creaks open. My heart jumps into my throat and I launch myself at my phone, but before my finger can find the end button, Cat sits down next to me.

"You can keep listening." Her tiny little voice is distorted by the tears running down her face. She wipes her eyes and tries to smile, but it doesn't look right.

"And I don't mean that in a…a "you're my best friend and I love you" kind of way, although that's true too… That's still true." Cat rests her head on my shoulder and grabs a hold of my arm. She's like a sad little child and that slight maternal instinct inside me urges me to comfort her in some way, so I let go of my phone and grab her hand, awkwardly squeezing it.

"I just love you, Jade. I do. I love you so much, and it hurts sometimes. I don't know…why now? I guess maybe it's been a long time. A really long time, actually. I worked so hard to make you my friend and then I just...this happened. Something happened and I quit feeling the way that I used to feel...the way I always felt...and now I guess I screwed that up. Here I am, telling you through a voicemail message that I love you, like I really expect that to change anything…like you'd love me back or something. I just don't…I don't…"

Another moment of silence. Cat rubs my arm with the hand I'm not holding.

"I shouldn't have called you. This was stupid. I just messed up. I'm so sorry. I just really screwed things up, I… Just call me. No, actually, don't call me. I don't…" Her voice cracks and her desperation shows even in this recording. "No, please, call me. Call me. Please, please call me. Please." The message ends and my phone starts to move on to the next one in my inbox. I reach out and hit the end button before turning to Cat. She gives me a weak little smile and awkwardly pats me on the back.

"You knew." I accuse her. Something in her face suggests Andre wasn't the only one who knew that Tori was in love with me.

"Knew what?" She asks, avoiding eye contact.

"You knew how Tori felt about me!" She cringes at the sound of my shouting.

"You didn't?" Rather than look at her, I pull myself off the ground and stare into the mirror once again. I take my bag from its place on the floor and pull the strap over my shoulder before I say another word.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"She told me not to."

"Oh, and you could actually keep that secret?" I snap at her, suddenly reminded of all the times I told her to keep something to herself and she couldn't. She starts crying again and I feel bad for the three-hundredth time this week.

"I'm sorry." She whimpers, stands there for a second staring at me, waiting for me to say something, and then runs out of the bathroom when I don't.

What do I do now? I'm so conflicted. My brain hurts. My eyes hurt from trying to hold in tears. I know I would have cried if Cat hadn't been there. Somehow Tori's voicemail was less heartbreaking with somebody there with me.

What was that about anyway? I want to know so badly what would have prompted her to call me at 11:30 on a Thursday night like that. Why was she so upset? Why was she so afraid of me? Am I really that intimidating?

Okay, so I _am_ that intimidating.

The timing of that phone call is the most painful. It's almost like she knew when she called me that she was going to get t-boned by a semi three hours later on her way back from Santa Barbara.

She dropped a bomb on me and then she died. She told me she loved me and she begged me to call her and I didn't, and I can't now.

Why did I listen to that message? What did I think I was going to get out of that? Now I'm even more miserable and I don't want to go to class, but I have to. I skipped a whole week. I have to go back. I have no reason to be so upset, so…traumatized. What was she to me? A friend? I suppose. Not that our friendship had really lasted. Why do I still care? Everybody else is moving on and I'm just here…not moving…not feeling any better whatsoever. I feel like crap. Absolute crap. Because I am crap, because I treated her like _she_ was crap and now I regret it but it's too late.

What do I do now? What did I do before? I can hardly remember my life before Tori.

I don't remember life before I was angry and depressed. I've been unhappy for a very long time. It's just a lot worse now.


	5. Chapter 5

**_How goes it? Hope you all have had a lovely week so far. I've got midterms this week so I really should be studying but this sounded so much better..._**

**_Thanks for reading/reviewing. :)_**

* * *

><p>It's Tuesday and for some reason the bottle of Chardonnay mom's been keeping in the back of the cereal cabinet looks incredibly appealing. It's been there for years – since before dad moved out. She doesn't drink much and when she does, she has a beer or a wine cooler or something cheap and easy like that while she's locked in her room, working. She keeps the wine for special occasions but she's always at work so none of those ever come around.<p>

If I'm going to develop an alcohol problem I might as well be classy.

I sneak the bottle and a corkscrew into my bedroom with me, not bothering to risk making noise finding a glass. It's nearly two o'clock in the morning and if mom catches me with this, she'll kill me. Not because I'm drinking – she knows I've done it before and could hardly care – but because this is an expensive bottle of wine. She won't notice it's gone, but if she sees me taking it, she won't be happy.

I close my bedroom door behind me quietly, although my mother's room is a floor above me and on the other side of the house, which means that the chances she'll hear me are pretty slim. I set the bottle and the corkscrew on my bed gently and pull a blanket out of my closet. It's freezing in this house. It's always freezing in this house, but mom has a lock on the thermostat and she won't tell me what the code is. She says she doesn't need me messing with the thermostat and running her electricity bill up, but she's not the one who has to freeze in her own home.

I snuggle into the corner of my room, next to my computer desk, and open the bottle, slicing my finger a little when I yank the cork off the corkscrew. I'm a little hesitant to put the bottle to my mouth. I can hardly remember if I even like wine. I don't remember the last time I had any of it but I know from experience it doesn't take much. I actually haven't drank at all in close to a year. I officially quit drinking when I got pregnant, of course, but even after that, I didn't feel the need to do it. I don't even feel the need right now, but I'm going to anyway because I don't know what else to do. I feel bad and I don't want to feel bad. I will tomorrow, but if it will just go away for a couple hours, that'd be nice.

It's probably a bad idea to mix alcohol and the internet, but I take a couple swigs and grab my laptop off the desk anyway. I haven't been on The Slap in a week so I pull up the page. There's a tiny little 3 on the notification bar. The first two status updates I see are both about the twist ending of some new movie, which now is ruined for all of us, thank you very much _assholes_. I decide I don't care about what anybody on The Slap has to say, so I open another tab and mindlessly swallow some more wine as I open my email inbox. I haven't checked it in a long time – I had it set up on my phone, but it hasn't been notifying me of anything lately. – so I have a lot of emails. The majority of them are spam messages about male enhancement drugs or something else I have absolutely no use for, but the most recent one is from my father. Dad basically only contacts me via email these days. I very rarely reply to any of his messages, which really pisses him off, but if he doesn't want a relationship with his daughter that requires face to face contact, he's not going to have any sort of relationship at all.

I open the email and stare at it for a moment before my brain even recognizes that there are words on the page. A small phrase sticks out before the rest of the email. "That Tori girl." He uses words my brain does not fully comprehend to accuse me of using Tori's death as an excuse for not going to school all last week. I swallow as much wine as I possibly can in one sip.

As if he has any right to accuse me like that. _As__if__he__has__any__right__to__talk__to__me__at__all._

I'm so angry right now that I can't even come up with a response. I can't even read the rest of the email. Why do I have to justify grieving anyway? Why do I need to say anything at all to him? Why is he such an _asshole_?

"Fuck." I hiss when I accidentally knock over the wine bottle on my laptop. Luckily it's now empty enough that only a little of it spills out before I can catch it. There's nothing around me soak it up so I clumsily yank my shirt over my head and dab at my keyboard with it, crying so hard that I can't see whether it's helping or not.

This is why my father and I don't speak in person anymore. One of us always ends up crying, and unfortunately because I never get my way with him, it's always me.

I hate crying.

I hate being so weak.

I hate my father.

I wish Tori was here. I want to call Tori. I want her to come over here and take this bottle from me and make me go to bed and tell me things will be okay so I can yell at her to never make such a stupid promise to me ever again because things will _not _be okay because I can't _do _any of this because Tori is fucking _dead_.

It's been eleven days. Twelve now. Thirteen since I last saw her. Fourteen since we last spoke. Twenty-nine since we last held a legitimate conversation. One hundred and twenty-three since I last considered us friends.

One. Two. Three.

That's a long time.

One hundred twenty-three and I never truly apologized to her.

One hundred twenty-three is a huge number. A massive number. That's a lot of days. That's so much time and so many thoughts and so many chances to make it up to her that I _didn__'__t __take._

If thoughts were drops of water, I would have had enough in the last twelve days alone to drown the world.

What did I think about for one hundred and twenty-three days?

Why wasn't one of those thoughts the simple little idea to go to her house and knock on her door and wait for her to open it and spit out that dirty little word _sorry _and then run away as if my life depended on it?

It's been twelve days.

Zero chances.

What do I do now?

I drink. The contents of this bottle are disappearing far too fast. I surely did not drink all of this.

What do I do? I don't know what to do.

Homework. I have homework. I skipped six days of school. I have so much homework.

I have a play to write. I can start with that.

My laptop miraculously still works and my brain is buzzing and there are so many words in my head and I struggle at first to put them in the right order.

All I can hear is blood rushing in my ears and the sound of typing. I type and I type and I type and I don't even know if what I'm writing is English or if it makes sense but I'm drunk already and I don't understand anything so maybe it is alright or maybe it isn't.

One page two pages three pages four pages.

This is supposed to be short but it's not short and it's not done and I'm going to have to exceed the page limit because I just can't end it here.

I don't know what I'm writing.

Are these even words?

I don't care I just want to finish this play and finish everything else and graduate and live in a dark little room by myself for the rest of my life. I just want to go to bed and sleep for months or maybe a year or a decade or two.

I hear the ding of an instant message. I don't hear that sound very often. People tend to be a little too afraid of me to try making conversation.

I take one last drink and set the bottle on the floor before turning to my computer again. It's Beck. Why is he talking to me? I thought I told him to leave me alone.

"Hey, you alright? It's 4 AM." Oh really? Who are you, God of Clocks?

So. You're still awake too dickhead.

"It's raining. Metal roof. Can't sleep." I don't respond to him this time. It's getting really hot in here. My head is spinning. My mind is wandering and I don't like where it's going.

"Jade. Go to bed."

No. Leave me alone. Get out of my life.

"Are you drunk?" How can he tell? How can he _always _tell?

No.

Yes. Horribly horrendously terribly drunk. But no. I won't admit it to him.

"I'm coming over."

No. Leave me alone.

I close my laptop once again and shut my eyes. He won't actually show up. He's just trying to look like a decent boyfriend.

But I want him to come over. I want him to sneak into my room and sit next to me and not say a word and just hold me. Oh God. Now I want to puke for thinking such a disgusting thought.

I should go to bed. I shouldn't have taken that bottle. I shouldn't still be drinking it. I should put it away and go to bed but I can't and I don't want to but I should I should I should I should I should.

I don't feel better. Why did I do this? I wanted to feel better. I want to feel better. I want to be happy for just once is that so much to ask? What a foolish thing to want, though. When's the last time I was happy? I don't even remember the last time. I don't remember it at all but I'm sure it was because of Tori so it will never happen again and I'm doomed to a life of misery and _what_ a surprise that is.

My brain won't shut up. Ican'tthinkthisfast. Myheadisgoingtoexlpode. Ijustwouldliketodienow. Please.

I close my eyes and I lie flat but I don't fall asleep even though I want to so bad.

"Jade, what are you doing?" Beck's voice sounds funny. He's talking underwater. I can't understand him.

"Jade?" I snap back to reality. He's standing above me, staring down at me with his nose all scrunched up and his eyebrows shoved together and he's squinting like he's looking into the sun. He looks so tall from here. His hair is so shiny and...nice.

"Becky?" A word comes out of my mouth and it sounds like his name but he looks confused.

"Babe, what are you doing?" He asks me, sitting down beside me on the floor. His rough hand slides over mine.

"Trying to sleep." I answer, eyes shut tight.

"On the floor?"

"Is this the floor?"

"Yes it is." He sounds like he's smiling but I can't tell because I can't see him because my eyes are closed.

"Oh." My brain is crawling now.

I

can't

think

fast

enough

to

comprehend

a

single

thing

I'm

doing

saying

feeling.

Beck slips his hand under my back and pulls me into his arms. He starts stroking my hair and even though I would usually hate this it feels good. He smells amazing. I can feel his muscles through his shirt. I can see them almost perfectly in my head. That's an image I have memorized. He's so beautiful.

"Beck?"

"Yes?"

"Do you love me?"

"Of course I do, silly." He taps my nose with his finger. "Why would you ask a question like that?"

"Just making sure." He kisses my forehead but when he pulls back I can feel him breathing on my neck.

"Beck?"

"Hmm?"

"Will you get naked with me?"

He's laughing. What's so funny? That wasn't a joke.

"Not tonight." He finally answers as he stands up.

"Why not?"

"I forgot my naked at home."

"No you didn't." Beck tilts his head to the side and laughs again. Suddenly his hand is in my face and he wants me to take it but I can't quite control my own hand well enough to grab it.

"Come here." He exhales at a terrible volume as he pulls me up off the ground. I push him away and stumble over to my dresser to change even though I'd so much rather lie down on the ground again and just sleep there in yesterday's clothes. I pull on one of the drawers and it feels like I've ripped my whole fingernail off doing this, but it's still there. It hurts though, so I start to cry, and then Beck is there once again, hugging me from behind. He stays there until I start to fall asleep leaning against him, and then he steers me to my bed.

"Sit." He says, like I'm his dog and not his girlfriend.

He opens my top drawer, looking over his shoulder at me with a smirk on his face when he realizes it's the one that holds my underwear. He pulls open the next one and grabs some of my pajamas. They don't even match. Typical boy.

"Arms up." He orders when he meets me at my bed again. I do as he says and just stare straight ahead as he pulls my camisole over my head and replaces it with a t shirt. He redresses me the rest of the way and tucks me into bed like I'm a toddler or incapable of moving my body on my own.

"Uhh, where do you think you're going?" I snap when he turns off the light and grabs the doorknob.

"I'll be right back." I hear the soft clinking sound of my bottle of wine and the squeak of the door as he closes it behind him.

As much as I want to wait for him to come back, I can't, and I start to drift off, only for the door to squeak once again. There's a slight rustling sound as he strips down to his boxers and climbs into my bed with me. He's so much warmer than the four blankets I've piled onto my bed and I curl up next to him, feeling so much more relaxed than that stupid bottle made me feel.

"Goodnight." He whispers. "You'll feel better tomorrow."

He's such a terrible liar.

* * *

><p><em><strong>That sort of hurt me to write... I promise it won't be so Bade-y throughout the whole thing. You know what they say... You've got to brave the Bade to get to the Jori... Well, I say that. <strong>_

_**Let me know what you think. :)**_


	6. Chapter 6

_**Sorry about the wait. I know it's been a bit longer than usual... I've sort of got excuses... **_

_**I hope your holidays went/are going well. :) **_

_**Thanks for the lovely reviews on the last chapter, and thanks in advance to those of you who review this one. **_

* * *

><p>It was a Wednesday when I told Beck. I'd decided not to tell him right after my appointment for a couple of reasons - the biggest one being that I was hardly in the state of mind to speak at all and it certainly wouldn't go well if I wasn't at least slightly prepared. It was dinner time the following day before I had really even calmed down enough to even admit it to myself. I knew if I held it off any longer, I would end up with a huge mess, so I woke up that morning and mentally wrote out the script for the conversation while I was in the shower. Beck had to leave school early that day for a big movie audition he'd been preparing for and stressing over for a couple of weeks – another reason why I didn't tell him Tuesday – and I couldn't ruin that opportunity for him, so it had to wait until after. If I had told him before the audition he could decide not to go, and I couldn't have him blaming me ten years down the road for stopping him from taking a chance that could have changed his life. I knew he'd be mad that I didn't tell him right away, but it was better this way.<p>

He picked me up from my house on the way back from the audition and we stopped for some Chinese takeout. The smell of his unopened pork sitting on the console between us made me nauseous and I had to roll down the window so I wouldn't throw up. I responded to a couple of Tori's text messages and fiddled with my jewelry while he told me how the audition had gone. If Beck had noticed I wasn't eating or paying attention to a single word coming from his mouth, he didn't acknowledge it. He drove me back to his RV and led the way inside before I threw my plan out the window and decided to improvise.

"Ummm…I have a problem." He sat down on his bed and opened his takeout container so he could finally eat it. The smell filled the whole RV immediately and I gagged before continuing. "Well, _we_ have a problem." That got his attention.

"We?" He stood up and set his food down on one of the three decrepit suitcases he'd seemingly been collecting in a spot beside his bed. "What kind of problem?" He asked, running his hand through his hair and avoiding making any eye contact with me.

"Umm, well, I'm gonna tell you a story, okay?" He turned toward me and lifted both eyebrows, looking rather impatient. "Sit down." Beck obeyed my order and took a seat on his bed once again.

"What kind of story is this?"

"If you shut up I'll tell you." He scowled but remained quiet, retrieving his food and taking another bite. "Okay. So once upon a time a boy and a girl met at school. The boy thought the girl was really hot but the girl thought the boy was really boring, but she gave him a chance anyway and they started dating, and then they started fucking." Beck interrupted my story by choking on his pork. I waited for him to stop, and then continued. "And then one day the girl wasn't feeling well so she went to the doctor and found out she was six weeks pregnant. The end." He stared at me and didn't say a thing.

"What?" He spit out that one word without moving his face.

"Did you not understand the story?"

"No, I understood it. I'm just…what?"

"I'm pregnant." I stated more clearly, annoyed by his confusion. A million different emotions crossed his face but he mostly just looked like he was going to cry. He threw his unfinished dinner at the trash can and missed, before he ran his hands over his face and a growling noise came out of his mouth.

"No. You can't be." His face was bright red when he uncovered it, and I didn't know what to do, so I just stood there while a series of curse words came out of his mouth. As the seconds ticked by he got angrier and started to completely lose control. Just a few minutes later, I was just standing in the middle of my boyfriend's RV while he threw things around the room. My phone vibrated in my pocket so I pulled it out to check my messages, ducking to avoid getting hit by something small and red.

"_How's he taking it?" _Tori had known I'd be telling Beck and had been sending me annoyingly supportive text messages all day, begging to know what was going on.

"_He's really mad. He's throwing things."_

"THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!" Beck shouted just as a picture frame shattered against the wall right behind where my head would have been if I hadn't ducked a second earlier. He was taking the news a lot worse than I'd expected. I'd known he was going to be upset but I hadn't planned on him breaking anything or nearly injuring me.

"Would you calm down for a second?" I yelled back at him, tucking my phone into my bag before I tried to grab his arms to stop him from breaking anything else. He just ripped them out of my grasp and took a step back.

"No, I won't _calm down!" _He shouted in my face like I was a lunatic for suggesting it. "Do you realize what this means?" He beat his fist against the wall twice and the thermometer hanging there fell down with a crunching sound. "My life is fucking over! Everything I ever dreamed about doing with my life is _gone, _Jade! I'll have to get some stupid minimum wage job flipping burgers just to pay your hospital bills, and then what do I do? I'll have a kid – I'll have to give up every dream I ever had of becoming an actor and be a, a car salesman, or an insurance adjustor, or something boring and awful for the rest of my life because I'll have someone depending on me before I even graduate high school!" With every word he broke down more and more, and by this point he was full-out crying – something I had _never _seen him do before.

"Oh, _you'll _have a kid? I don't know what you know about babies, but it takes two, alright? We're in this together. You're being completely ridiculous."

"_I'm being ridiculous?" _He rubbed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration before he spoke again. "My life is over because we were stupid, okay?"

"Your life? Are you the one who has to expand to the size of an elephant and then push this thing out of your vagina? Didn't think so! Don't you even think about talking to me about how _your _life is ruined. You can leave right now if you want to. I can't." With that, I pulled my bag up onto my shoulder and moved toward the door.

"You really think I'd leave you to do this alone?" He exclaimed, following me outside.

For some reason, Tori was sitting in the driveway in her sister's car. At first I thought I was imagining things, but as I walked toward her I realized she was really there. It was a miracle, really. I wasn't sure why she was there, and I wasn't about to ask, but I really needed to get out of there, and walking would have been my only choice, had she not shown up.

"No, I don't. You're too good for that. The thing is, though, you have a choice." I climbed into the passenger seat and slammed the door behind me, and then I let myself break down and start crying. Beck beat on the window with the side of his fist, yelling something to me that I was too busy having a meltdown to understand.

"Open the door, Jade! Get out of the car! We're going to talk about this!" He shouted through the glass, yanking on the door handle although he knew it was locked.

"We're not going to _talk. _You're just going to keep yelling, and I'll keep having to duck while you throw things!" I screamed back at him, turning to Tori to see why she wasn't driving away yet. She turned the car off, surprisingly, and climbed out of the driver's seat before she crossed the front of the car and tried to pull him away.

"HEY!" She barked when Beck just pushed her away and continued to beat on the window. "You need to calm down! Both of you!" Beck finally turned away from me, staring at Tori with a look on his face that suggested he'd only just really noticed that she was there.

"Let her leave, Beck. Go back inside and take a deep breath… Watch a movie, take a nap, whatever. Just calm down and you can talk about this tomorrow, okay?"

"But-"

"Don't be stupid. You've said enough. You're upset, okay? That's completely understandable. You can talk about it tomorrow when you're not so angry… You're both my friends. I want to help you, and the best way to do that is for you to go inside and calm down, and for Jade to come with me…" She was holding her arms out as if to guard herself from him, but as his face straightened her fingers met with her thighs. She nodded, he nodded, and Tori took a step back, toward the car.

"You're right." Beck admitted. "I'm sorry." He directed the last part at me, staring through the windshield while Tori climbed back into the driver's seat.

"Oh, Beck?" She poked her head out of the car to add one more thing. "Don't text or call her tonight. Wait until tomorrow."

"Fine." He grumbled, pushing his hair back as he put his back to us and went inside. I don't know how she did it, but Tori had gotten through to him in a way that I never could have.

She then started the car and silently left Beck's driveway. Somehow, she had successfully driven half of the way to my house without saying a word, which was quite the accomplishment for her. I could tell she wanted so badly to speak, as she glanced at me when she thought I wasn't looking at least fifteen times.

"Why'd you come?" I asked her. She shrugged and flipped on her turn signal, letting it tick four times before she answered.

"I thought you could use some help."

"Really?" I questioned apprehensively, as I was still paranoid because of how quickly she'd gotten there, without my asking.

"Yeah. We're friends. That's what friends do, right? Help each other?"

"I wouldn't know." I mumbled, pulling at a string on my shirt and immediately hoping that she hadn't heard me say that. I could tell we were about to have a stupid, cheesy little heart-to-heart.

"Don't say that. You have friends." Her voice was a thousand times softer now, like she was trying to talk me down. I hadn't meant that it bothered me, but obviously she'd taken it that way.

"Yeah, you. And you're weird." I let a little smile slip when she immediately took offense to that, taking her eyes off of the road in order to glare at me, which caused her to nearly take out someone's mailbox.

"_I'm_ weird?"

"Yeah, you creep me out. You're a weirdo Tori. You're a weird person."

"Says the girl who keeps jars of fatty lumps on her bedside table…" She pouted, faking hurt feelings while she concentrated on the road. I just grinned, settled into my seat some more, and didn't open my mouth again until we got to my house.

Tori followed me inside without being invited, so I wasn't sure what to do. I was still working on the whole best friends thing. Should I ask her to stay? Tell her to leave? Thank her? Say nothing?

"Uhhh…do you…want to, ummm…stay?" My mouth had quit working properly. It felt like it had taken me an hour to spit out that one question, and what did Tori do? She started laughing at me. She was full-on bent over with laughter, and I wasn't quite sure why.

"What's so funny?"

"It's just…" She was totally hyperventilating. I really thought she was going to pass out and die in my living room, and I'd be too freaked out to enjoy the irony. "It's so adorable how uncomfortable you are."

"What?" She just smiled and rested her hand on my shoulder without a single word.

"_Adorable? _I'm _not _adorable."

"_Yeah you are_. You're super cute. You're _adorable_." She stuck her tongue out and patted me on the head. The biggest smile I've ever seen covered her face, and it felt contagious.

"Say that again." She took off running through my kitchen, and I went after her, following a second-long delay. "Tell me I'm adorable one more time, Tori! Do it!" I shouted across the room, soon discovering how hard it is to run and laugh at the same time while I chased her through the kitchen, dining room, and down the hall, cornering her by my bedroom door.

"Okay, I take it back." She had gone from a giant smile to a hilariously straight face in half a second, and I just stared at her, waiting for her to break and laugh again. "You're not adorable." She cracked just long enough for me to notice, and pulled her serious face back on right away. "You're horrible and ugly and I have nightmares about your face."

"Ugly? I am _not _ugly."

"Well what do you want me to say?" She eased into her smile again when I backed off, and neither of us said anything. She laughed rather awkwardly, and I led the way into the kitchen, where I started going through the refrigerator for any kind of food that wouldn't make me puke.

"You know," Tori started to say, interrupted by the screeching sound of the barstool she was pulling out. "I like it when you're nice to me…but at the same time it scares me."

"Me being nice scares you? Do you have your head on backwards?"

"No, I just mean…you never used to be nice to me, so I can't help but be a little paranoid that mean Jade is going to pop up out of nowhere and murder me in my sleep or something to make up for this week…" I stared at her, unsure how to respond. She just blinked twice and then looked down at the counter top, where she was resting her clenched fists.

"…I can be mean if you want me to." I piled the makings of a decent sandwich onto the counter next to her and slammed the refrigerator door shut before she responded.

"Nah, I'm good."

"I'm still getting used to this whole 'friends' thing." I explained while I dug through the silverware drawer for a butter knife. "To be honest, going so long without insulting you is giving me a serious migraine."

"Then you should probably do it. Insult me. Insult me _real bad_." I looked up from the bread I was spreading butter on to see Tori staring at me, one eyebrow raised and the corners of her mouth turned up just a little.

"Okay…well…" I couldn't come up with anything. I had always been so good at this, but my ability to be a bitch to people had been dying off over the past few days, and I couldn't quite bring it back to life, so I just spit out anything I could think of. "Your shirt. I'm pretty sure my great aunt had that same pattern on her living room curtains. She died in 1997 and she was blind." Tori just smiled, which took all the fun out of insulting her, but I kept doing it anyway. "You should throw those jeans in a wood chipper. Your hair is frizzy. You look like your face caught on fire and someone tried to put it out with a fork. Your cuticles are a disaster area and you have a zit on your chin the size of the United States budget deficit." Tori's grin shrunk a little, but my comments had obviously bounced right off, as I'd intended them too.

"Love you too."


	7. Chapter 7

**Sorry about the wait. I've got many excuses and they all suck. Thanks for reading, though. I hope you enjoy this chapter. :)**

It's Tuesday and Beck is still at my house when I wake up. He stays with me all morning, but he doesn't say much. He makes himself a sandwich and he watches TV in the living room while I lie in the dark in my bed, unable to sleep anymore despite how exhausted I am. My head aches and my stomach is sick but I feel numb and even though it's temporary, for once I only hurt in the physical sense of the word, and this is the happiest I've been in a while.

Around eleven Beck comes back to my room and lies across the foot of my bed. He stares at me for a while and my throat swells more and more as the seconds tick by without a word. I can't breathe. I need to get out of here but I can't move without my head blowing up.

"You wanna tell me what last night was about?" He asks quietly.

"No."

"Let me rephrase that." He dramatically clears his throat like he's about to give some big, mind-blowingly inspirational speech. "You need to tell me what last night was about."

"I don't need to tell you anything."

"Jade." He just says my name and gives me that look that _always _works on me. I'm everything I hate around him. All he has to do is look at me and I fall apart and lose all sense of myself and just become this stupid, easily-influenced, totally dependent, disgusting, love-struck teenager, and the worst part is that I like it. Most of the time I don't even realize that I'm acting that way and I'm entirely content with just obeying every order he gives me, as long as he just tells me he loves me, or at the very least keeps looking at me that way…

"Why are you even asking? You already know what's wrong with me." His face doesn't change. My heart is melting and I can hardly even feel it.

"…Still?"

"What do you mean, _still?_ Is it wrong that I'm not okay yet? Is that what you're saying? Are you trying to tell me I should be better by now? It's been _one week_, Beck."

"Almost two weeks." He corrects me and he instantly regrets it. He leaps right off my bed and takes a few steps back before he realizes I'm in no shape to smack him for that comment.

"It's been a hard year, okay? I'm still dealing with…everything…and my whole life's just kind of messed up, you know? So I just…I don't feel okay, and I'm _not_ okay, but I will be eventually. Just not now."

"I know. I'm sorry." He moves closer and turns on the lamp beside my bed. The sound of the chain being pulled hurts more than the light does. "Get out of bed. I made you lunch."

Lunch. Yay. That makes everything better.

"We need to get to school soon." He adds once I half-fall out of my bed and pull some clean clothes on. I feel like punching him for even suggesting that I leave the house today, but I settle with glaring at him instead.

"Come on Jade, you missed all last week."

"So did you."

"And I'm going to school today, just like you are. You have no excuse. You're only miserable because you made yourself that way." I know he means with the drinking but I can't help but think that this applies to the entirety of my life as well. I could have just gone on hating Tori, and this wouldn't hurt. If I hadn't chosen to like her, I would be okay right now. I would be alright.

It's funny how terrible I am at making good decisions.

I go to school even though I know Beck would have given in eventually, and I sit through one whole class without crying or hurting anybody or leaving like I so desperately want to. After that, though, it sounds like a much better idea to just ditch class. I have nowhere to hide in this stupid building though. The halls are full of those horrible posters and the fucking shrines that I can't go two fucking seconds without seeing, and I can't go to the janitor's closet – that was something I shared with Tori. I can't go hide in any of the theaters – Tori's been on all those stages so many times… I don't want to go outside either – each of those disgusting blue tables remind me of all those lunch periods sitting at our usual spot, which isn't our usual spot anymore – but at least if I go out there, I won't risk seeing her face anywhere.

I drag myself out to the Asphalt Café and collapse onto a random table, setting my bag on the table top so I can use it as a pillow while I take a much-needed nap. It doesn't exactly work out, as this is a very uncomfortable seat and my bag is way too lumpy. I don't know why I even carry it around anymore. All that's in there is a bunch of crap I don't use. I haven't even looked inside it for quite some time, until now. There are a bunch of receipts, the wrappings of things I opened when I wasn't near a trash can, a bundle of keys at the bottom, of which one is my car key, one is my house key, and the other five hundred are for who-knows-what. My wallet is settled at the bottom, full of nothing but random punch cards from stores I don't go to anymore and maybe five dollars. I've got a few granola bars in here, which are probably stale by now, but they look disgusting anyway. There's a book in here that I'm pretty sure belongs to Beck, three pairs of sunglasses, one of which has a busted lens, two of my favorite pairs of scissors, and at the very bottom, a small black notebook… Tori's notebook.

After the horrible mistake I'd made going to Tori's visitation, I'd forgotten all about taking this from her room. I'm almost afraid to read it. After yesterday, I now have a pretty good idea of what kind of things she'd said about me in here, and I don't know if I want to be reminded.

I flip the book open anyway and skim through the first few pages. Beside the scary accurate drawings of each member of our group, she has very detailed descriptions of everyone, coupled with her first impression of us all. I want to laugh at her first impressions of Cat and Robbie – she, like everyone else on the planet – questioned their sanity before she even knew their names – but it feels completely inappropriate to find humor in something that belonged to someone who's dead.

I read through Andre's page, taking my time because I'm afraid to see my own. Her first impression of me was obviously a bad one.

Suddenly, there's a hand on my back, and someone sits down beside me before I can turn to see who it is.

"Whatcha reading?" Andre asks very unenthusiastically, peaking at the page in front of me. "Did you draw that?"

"Uhh, no…I, uh… I know it's horrible but I… I took this from Tori's room…" He just brushes off my crime and leans closer, studying his page of the book.

"I didn't know she could draw like that." He comments softly, running his fingers over the paper as he reads everything Tori had to say about him. It's obvious by the second sentence that they were great friends. A detailed description of her first impression of Andre is followed by a giant paragraph of all sorts of disgusting mushy crap about how important he was to her and how he was the first real best friend she'd ever had in her life. I would feel uncomfortable reading this even if I were still alone, so having Andre there, taking in these same words over my shoulder has brought this little book to a whole new level of awkward.

I reach the end of his page, but Andre's a slow reader and I don't say anything to him until he finishes. I can tell he's expecting me to turn the page, but I also know that I'm on the other side, and while Andre was her _real _best friend and probably knew every feeling toward me that Tori had and wrote in here, the thought of him reading it with me makes vomiting sound like a great time.

"I'm gonna read my page alone." It's not a question, but he answers like it is.

"Yeah, that's fine. I get it." His hands are folded on top of the table now and he's staring off in the general direction of the parking lot, probably considering getting up and running away to avoid talking to me any more than he already has.

"Can I ask you a question?" That _was _a question. God, I hate when people ask that. Why did that just come out of my mouth? "I mean- When, umm… When Tori… When we were friends…did that bother you?"

"You mean like….all the time you guys spent together? You're asking if I was jealous?"

"Yeah." He shrugs twice and opens his mouth, only for a breath to come out while the words stay in. He struggles with his answer for a few more seconds before finally speaking in a tone I don't completely believe. "Not _really_. I didn't get to see her much, you know, but I get it. I'm a dude, you're not. You kind of win by default."

"You really think I was a better friend to her than you were?" I don't intend to make a joke out of this but my voice comes out with a hint of laughter.

"No." He answers right away and his smile makes me feel better. "You're a terrible person. I was _obviously _the better friend." I know he's joking but I also know there's some truth in what he says, and I can't help but take it to heart. He looks embarrassed for a split second, before he starts digging himself out of the hole he just put himself in. "But you know, there are just some things girls can't talk to a guy about. I'm, uhh…glad she had you for that."

"Things like what?" I inquire. Andre's a good distraction. He's going through the same thing I am, and unlike Beck, he doesn't question why I _need _to be distracted. He just does it, because talking and joking about other things gets both our minds off of her.

"Well…ummm...things like-"

"Girls don't sit around talking about boys, shopping, and their hair all the time, you know."

"They don't?" I can tell he isn't completely serious, but he looks rather uncomfortable now, and I love it.

"And that fantasy you guys have about us having pillow fights while wearing lingerie for no reason…that doesn't happen either."

"Dang." He laughs this time, but leaves it to me to keep the conversation going. I lick my lips and close my eyes for a second, partially believing he'll be gone when I open them again and I can just go back to reading by myself.

"Well, I don't actually know what most girls talk about with each other… Tori and I, we had a… Well, I wouldn't say our relationship was normal. It couldn't be, really. I don't know how I really went from – from pouring coffee on her head the first day I met her to counting her as my best friend a couple years later." He nods in silence. I wish he'd say something before I start sharing too much. "And then we just…started over, I guess. I mean, it was different this time...it was a lot worse. What I did to her was just...terrible. "

"I know." Andre finally speaks again, only he wasn't supposed to agree with me. That doesn't make me feel any better. This is exactly why I don't usually talk about my problems. As long as they don't come out of my mouth, the words can bounce around in my head and arrange themselves any way I want them to. Once they're out, though, there's only one way they can be dealt with.

"You _know?_" I spit out the two words in the harshest tone possible, and he flinches.

"I just meant she told me what you did. Not that-"

"Just forget it." I mumble, closing my eyes again. I've never wanted to go home so much in my entire life. I don't think my legs will even function long enough to bring me back to class.

Andre is dead quiet for close to an entire minute, and I have nothing to say to end his silence. I wonder if he's anywhere near as uncomfortable as I am right now.

"You've been so…nice…lately." He finally mumbles something, and it doesn't help the situation.

"So?"

"Well it's just kind of unusual, that's all…" It's _unusual _for me to be nice? Can't do anything right, can I? Point out someone's flaws and I'm suddenly a terrible person. Compliment them and it's weird.

"I don't have the energy to be mean anymore." I want to go back to bed. My head hurts and it's getting so bright out here. Stupid sun. Go away. Let's play a never-ending game of hide and seek.

"Then why do it?"

"Because that's who I am, okay? Are you done interrogating me?" I shove everything deep into my bag and untangle myself from the stupid blue table.

"That's the Jade I know."

"Shut up. You sound like a therapist."

"Even better."

"Stop talking to me."

…

It was a Friday when Tori stayed the night at my house for the first of many times. Typical Tori, she came over with her bag full to the top with these ancient books and magazines that she said were lying around the house. God only knows why her family still had them.

While I sliced up a banana – which had been making up half of my diet for nearly a week, by this point – to add to the peanut butter sandwich I was making myself at 9 o'clock at night, Tori yanked half of her library out of the hideous purple bag she'd been carrying around in place of her usual brown one that week and spread it out on the island counter top.

"So I asked my mom-"

"You told your mom?" I snapped, dropping my butter knife, which landed on my foot and left a bruise that didn't go away for two whole weeks.

"_Nooo,"_ She answered, rolling her eyes as I dropped down to retrieve the knife. "I told her it's for a research project for health class."

"You're not in health class."

"She doesn't know that." Tori tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and twisted the bar stool so that she was facing me when I returned from washing the knife off in the sink. "Anyway, she told me she still had books from her last pregnancy in the attic that I could use. They're from years ago, but pregnancy hasn't exactly changed recently, so I figured they could be helpful." I tried not to laugh at her, but it was too difficult. She was so invested in my life. It was like she was my own little personal assistant. I still don't know why she cared so much.

"Don't laugh! This is stuff you need to know, alright? You need to know what to expect, okay? You've got to be careful what you eat, what you touch… Like…" She looked down at the page of the book she'd randomly opened to. "Don't touch cat litter."

"I don't plan on it."

"Seriously though. Apparently cat litter carries this parasite that causes a disease called 'Toxoplasmosis'… which could result in a 'miscarriage, early delivery, or stillbirth', and it could cause 'eye health issues or mental disabilities' in your baby."

"Good to know. Do you have anything useful in that ancient encyclopedia?"

"Well…" She drug out the word as she flipped back to the table of contents. "Ummm…you're going on your seventh week…" She turned a large number of pages and ran her finger down to the bottom, "So you can expect 'food aversions, fatigue, frequent urination, nausea and vommitting, tenderness in your-' Actually, why don't I just leave this with you, and you can read it later."

"You know this is what the internet's for, right?"

"I'm just trying to be helpful." She pouted at me as she closed the book and pushed it away from her. "I don't know what else to do for you."

"Get me a time machine, go back to the night you helped me get back together with Beck, and don't let that happen."

"I thought you guys made up." We had, for the most part. I'd hardly woken up the morning following our fight when he showed up at my house with a breakfast pizza and a vocabulary consisting of nothing but the words sorry, huge, jerk, and forgive. I mostly just accepted his apology so he'd shut up and give me the pizza. We were on speaking terms again, but it wasn't much better than that quite yet.

"We did." I assured her. "But we wouldn't have had a problem at all if I'd just broken up with him a year ago."

"True." She agreed with me and leaned across the counter. "Do you have any popcorn? Why don't we watch a movie?"

"I don't think you'd like any of my movies." She frowned, nodded, and watched me eat my sandwich for a few seconds before speaking again. "Well, I think there's a marathon of CSI on tonight."

"Fair compromise." I agreed, as I began the search for some popcorn.

An hour later, we were both fast asleep under a giant pile of blankets in my bed, while CSI played quietly without anyone conscious enough to watch it.


	8. Chapter 8

**Uh oh. I accidentally took forever with this one… My bad.**

It's Wednesday and something is off but I can't put my finger on what it is. I sit down beside Beck empty-handed like I 've been doing for the past few days, Andre and Cat take their usual spots beside me, and Robbie trips on his way over, gets up and takes a seat across from Beck and I, attempting to pretend that nobody saw him do that, even though _everybody _did.

As always, one of them starts a boring conversation while Beck tries to make me eat, and as I've done the first half of the week, I ignore him, and I ignore them, and I play with my water bottle without adding to their conversation in any way.

Something feels different, though, and it only takes me a moment to realize what it is. Beck and I are the only people at this table who aren't smiling, and although Beck never smiles, it's not hard to see he's happy today.

I know that it isn't supposed to work this way. It's acceptable to be depressed for a couple of days, maybe a week if you're really close, but then you move on. You do it slowly, but you stop looking so depressed all the time and you put on a mask and every once in a while, _you think about something else. _It's not working that way for me, and I don't know why.

I play with my phone a little as an excuse for distancing myself from this conversation, but they don't even notice. They must be so sick of me, just sitting here silently every day. All I do is bring them down. They're getting over it, and I'm still here at the bottom. I haven't moved an inch.

I stand up and I leave the table, but nobody follows me. They probably didn't even notice, but that's okay, because I don't want them to come after me.

I'm not hungry, but I mindlessly order a disgusting burrito from the Grub Truck, and I go back inside the school to eat it in peace. I sit down by some lockers and open the wrapper, but I can't make myself take a bite. As much as I want to believe that it's because this isn't real meat and I'll probably get some disgusting, life-threatening bacterial infection from eating it, in reality I'm not eating for the same reason I hardly ate yesterday, or the day before. The stress Tori has caused me has ripped a hole in my stomach, I swear, and I feel sick all the time and I just want to curl up on my couch at home and maybe watch a marathon of That '70s Show, or maybe a disgustingly cheesy romantic comedy, but I know if I do that, I will only feel worse, because those are things I never did before her, and now won't do afterwards.

"Jade." I look up from the tortilla-wrapped mystery meat in my lap, into Lane's face. "Do you have a minute?" He looks concerned, and his eyes travel to the lockers behind me. I look up and realize that, of course, the locker above my head is Tori's. What are the odds of that?

"Why?"

"Your teacher talked to me." He pauses, like I'm supposed to know what that means. "About your play." My play? My play… Shit. That crappy excuse for a homework assignment I did three days after it was due, while drunk. I don't even remember what it was about. I should have waited to send that in until the next day.

"Uhhh…what about it?"

"Why don't you just come to my office?" He won't stop with the sympathetic child-friendly voice and I actually feel scared for a moment, while I stand up and follow him across the school to his office. He takes a seat in his hanging chair, but I remain standing, despite his suggestion that I take a seat.

"You've turned in a lot of disturbing plays over the years, but given the circumstances, I wanted to talk to you about this one." He reaches for a bottle of lotion and starts to rub it into his hands, nodding toward the couch again.

"Was there something wrong with it?"

"Well, no, not really. It's a great play. Very…dark…but very well written. One of your best works, I hear." Oh, well that's reassuring. I do my best writing when I'm hammered. I'll have to keep that in mind. "The problem is that it's obviously based on what you're going through right now, and Mr. Gerrard was worried about you, so he gave me a copy, and I believe he was right to be worried." I don't know what to say, so I stand there, focusing more on my freezing toes than what Lane is saying.

"Jade, sit down. Please." I decide to humor him and I take a seat on the edge of his couch, praying that maybe if I tell him I'm fine he'll believe me and let me leave. "Did you speak to either of the grief counselors last week?" I don't know what he's talking about and I just stare at him, unable to open my mouth. "I take it that's a no. Well, I just want you to know you're not alone, and there are many other people in this school going through the same thing you are." It'd be lovely if that were true but we both know it's not. I'm not going through what everyone else is going through. This is different.

"I'm fine. Can I go?" He lets out a disappointed sigh, but gives in, as I start to stand up.

"Please don't hesitate to come see me, if you're having a bad day, or you want to talk about something, or even if you just want to cut class."

"I will." As if that would ever happen.

"It's okay to grieve, Jade. She was your friend." I just nod and rush out of his office as if it were on fire. I'm in such a hurry that I, in typical movie fashion, run right into Beck. He places his hands protectively on my arms as I stumble, but the look on his face doesn't match this caring gesture.

"Jade. What's going on?"

"I had to talk to Lane." I answer semi-honestly.

"Yeah, okay. That's why you've been some…" His face is turning red already, as he struggles with his words "broken robot all week?"

"No, Beck. I'm _depressed, _okay? My friend _died, _so I am _upset, _and you know _nothing. _I'm not 'acting like a broken robot.' A robot doesn't have a heart, or_ feelings,_ which is something you'd know a lot about, isn't it?" I try to walk away, but he grabs a hold of my arm.

"No, Jade, I get that you're upset, but it's been almost two weeks, and you're not moving on. This isn't normal behavior, and you're not you."

"I don't know what to tell you, Beck. I don't know when you read the book on normal behavior of the grieving teenager, but it's not something you rush. You can tell me that I need to get over it all you want, but it's _not going to happen_. I just… I need you to leave me alone."

"What are you talking about?" He's showing more emotion in his face right now than I've ever seen as long as I've known him, but I can't figure out if he's angry or surprised.

"Just go away. You don't understand and I can't expect you to, so…you're free of me." I'm not going to the rest of my classes anymore, so I start to go to my locker, but he yells after me. Luckily this time there's nobody else in the hallway, and no one gets to witness the public spectacle that is another one of our breakups.

"So, what, we're done? Is that what you're saying?"

"Yes. Until you can learn to respect me, we're done."

"_Respect._"He spits the word out and I know he's rolling his eyes as he stalks off like the terrible (ex)boyfriend Tori always tried so hard to convince me he wasn't.

…

It was a Monday when I spent my evening curled up in the arms of my best friend, crying over reruns of Law & Order. Though she'd seen me this way a couple of times before we were really friends, I didn't like to cry in front of her, and at this point I was only doing it because I knew she'd blame it on my hormones.

"She didn't mean to tell…" Tori had said this in a variety of ways, about ninety-seven times already. "You know Cat, she really can't keep a secret."

"It was stupid of me to tell her. Any of them, really. I should have just kept it between the three of us." She kept awkwardly stroking my hair while semi-concentrating on the TV, and didn't say anything right away.

"People would have found out eventually. It's not really something you can hide…"

"I know, but they didn't have to find out for another few months. I could have hidden it, but now I have to deal with another six and a half months of people staring at me like I'm an alien."

"I don't know, they probably would've started talking soon anyway. Your boobs are getting pretty big. It's kind of suspicious."

"They are?" I didn't think anything of the fact that she'd noticed, but suddenly I was aware for the first time of how tight my shirt was getting.

"Well, yeah… I mean I probably just noticed because I know what to expect, but those creepy freshman boys that sit a table over from us at lunch and always stare at your cleavage would've noticed." I laughed, thinking of the prepubescent little twerps. They were too afraid of me to actually say anything to my face, but I'm pretty sure they never even knew what it looked like, as I'd noticed them staring at nothing but my chest the first day of school.

"You wanna know something funny but also really creepy?" She suddenly asked, with a laugh that didn't sound like her usual one.

"What?"

"One of them – the one with the over-gelled hair and braces-" I nodded, knowing which one she was talking about. "Well, he came up to me at my locker a couple weeks ago and asked me if I had any naked pictures of you, because he was willing to pay for them."

"Oh my god. Why would he ask _you _that?" She'd done a good job of taking my mind off the situation at hand, though I wasn't sure feeling creeped out was any better than feeling betrayed.

"I don't know. Maybe he thinks I'm your photographer or something. I almost _died_, but I never thought to tell you until now."

"That is _so_ creepy. That kid's a future sex offender."

"He probably is." She agreed, as she turned up the volume on the TV.

"I just still can't believe Cat would just blurt it out like that in the middle of class. I…I know she didn't mean to humiliate me like that. She's an idiot – as mean as that is, it's true - and I can't really expect her to keep any secret, let alone one this big, but I still just can't believe she did that to me."

"I can't believe nobody believed my food baby excuse. I mean, did they _see _what you ate for lunch today? It was a totally acceptable explanation."

"Shut up." I pinched her, not quite hard enough to leave a bruise, and she swatted my hand away, laughing as I tiredly rested my head on her lap. "Well anyway, thanks for trying."

"No problem." She started stroking my hair again, and I was led to believe that it was another weird talent she had, because it was so unnaturally relaxing. "I've got a backup plan, in case singing doesn't work out. I'll become a pregnant-best friend body guard. Obviously not a very good one though."

"Flipping burgers would probably be a safer bet." I'm sure she probably laughed, but by then she'd put me to sleep and managed yet again to – at least temporarily – do away with my problems.


	9. Chapter 9

_**Hello again. Happy April. Thanks for everything.**_

It's Thursday and I skip school. It's not that I want to, but I wake up in the morning and my eyes burn and my head hurts and my chest aches and I can't make myself get up, so I go back to sleep. For the first time in a long time, I _want _to go to school – I don't want it to look like I skipped because of Beck, because I didn't, really, but I feel horrible, and I care more about myself than what other people think of me.

I wake up for the second time at noon and my mother is home for lunch. She's far from happy that I didn't go to school, but it's nothing compared to how she would react if she actually knew how messed up I've been lately. She yells at me a little, but she gets tired of me ignoring her and returns to the kitchen while I go back to sleep.

At 4:30, I wake up for the third time, and although my head is still throbbing, I get out of bed to take a shower. When I finally get dressed and go downstairs, it's just after 5 o'clock and my parents are both standing in the kitchen, in complete silence. I stand in the entryway, not sure what to say, and we all stare at each other for a moment, until my father finally speaks.

"Jade," he says, "your mother and I are worried about you."

My mother wants me to see a shrink. My father doesn't want to pay, but he's thinking if he sends me to another one, maybe this time he'll finally get a normal daughter back. A boring, acceptable one. I love to disappoint him, and I do it well.

I refuse, and mom looks like she's about to cry. Maybe _she _should see a psychiatrist.

"We understand that you're grieving, and that's _okay_." She says, resting her arm around my shoulders as she tries to comfort me. I push her off and back away, and she just stares at me. "But honey…" She begins again, "You're not grieving in a healthy way. We're concerned." I remind them both once again that 'professional help' is a joke but they don't falter.

"You don't have a choice, Jade." My father says with the same lack of emotion that I'm growing to expect from all men. Mom nods in agreement but gives me a weak little smile. "If you don't go your mother and I have decided that we will no longer pay for you to go to that school." _That school. _"It's a therapist or public school. Take your pick."

"Public school." I answer without hesitation, though I never really had a choice in the matter.

…

It was a Saturday when I brought it up for the first time.

"What do you think it feels like?" I asked Tori, as she laid beside me on top of the dark green covers of a bed display in the back of Bed, Bath, and Yonder.

"You mean…?" She didn't finish but she knew what I was talking about. I'm sure the thought of it probably scared her. It scared me, a little, not because of what I would need to go through, but because of what would happen afterward.

"Yeah." She played with the edge of the pillowcase below her head before she said a word.

"Well…it hurts… I mean, it always does on TV and in movies… But I'm sure they exaggerate it."

"Aww." I tried to sound disappointed but she could tell I was kidding. It's funny, how she thought I was serious for so long and now could tell so easily when I was joking. I almost miss the days when she truly believed I was as deranged as I tried to make her think I was.

"And then when it's over…you'll be all…gross…and sore…but then they'll bring you your baby and it will just be so…perfect…you know? And eventually you'll get to go home and screw up that baby as much as you want to, within reason." She laughed, but I didn't.

"I've been thinking…" I said to her, although the thought had only really just occurred to me. "Maybe I'm not…Beck and I aren't really…parent material…"

"You think so?" She asked, a strange tone in her voice that I couldn't quite identify. "I bet you'd be great parents. You two could be like…the perfect combination. Like those awesome parents you see on sitcoms all the time."

"I try to picture it…Beck playing catch with a little boy in the front yard, or putting up with a stupid tea party with a little girl…but I feel so…disconnected. I can't see myself in either situation at all…and deep down…I know Beck wouldn't be that kind of dad." Tori reached for my hand and took it in hers, but didn't say a thing. "I mean, they say that a woman becomes a mother at conception and a man becomes a father at birth, but I really…I don't feel that connection that I'm supposed to have, and I'm afraid that I'll _never_ have that bond, and I'll only give my baby a childhood like what I had. Lonely and…empty."

"I think the fact that you're worrying about it," She finally spoke up, trying her best to sound comforting, "proves that you'll give your baby a better life than what you've had."

"I hope so." I finally pulled my eyes away from the ceiling, miles above me, and ran my hand over my stomach, realizing that I could no longer see my feet when I laid that way. My body had swollen up just enough to hide the tips of my toes from me.

"W-what were you thinking?" Tori asked, rolling onto her side to face me. "If you don't think you can raise a baby, then…"

"Adoption, I guess. " I really hadn't thought about it much prior to that moment. I'd known I was absolutely terrified, but I hadn't really thought about a solution yet. "Abortions freak me out." I admitted. Tori looked at me, surprised. I'm sure she probably thought I was the type of person who could keep an aborted fetus in a jar in my bedroom. "But then again…I think we've got enough children growing up, wondering 'why didn't my mother love me?'"

"You've got months to think about it." Tori assured me. She obviously had no idea what else to say.

"I do." I agreed, mostly because I just didn't want to think about it any longer. "I shouldn't be freaking out yet. I've got six months to freak out. Right now, I need to relax." Sitting up, Tori looked at me with a smile.

"You do." I don't think she had any kind of idea what I was thinking when she encouraged me like that.

Two hours later, once the sun had officially set, we snuck into the back yard of the house two doors down from mine. At the time, it had been for sale, and the previous owners had just moved out, leaving their unguarded home open to people like myself and Tori. She didn't really have any idea what I was planning, but she went along with it. She liked to make people happy, and when it came to our weird little friendship, we were both happiest when she did what I wanted her to.

"Jade, what are we doing?" She whispered as I forced the pathetic little gate – which was obviously just for show, as the lock couldn't even keep animals out - open and pulled her into the back yard with me.

"You'll see." I smiled and she looked terrified, which was kind of exhilarating. "My horrible childhood is over now, but in a few months I'll be skipping over that whole reckless young adult phase and going straight to boring, responsible adult mode, so I'm going to enjoy the time I've got, before I turn into an elephant and become physically incapable of doing anything fun." I peeked into the window in the back of the house, into the kitchen, just to make sure the place was empty, and then returned to the gigantic swimming pool, still clean from the open house the previous weekend. Tori was still confused, and started to question me as I pulled my shirt over my head.

"Are we going to get caught? What are we even- WHOA." She suddenly turned away, her skin glowing bright red in the small amount of light from the streetlight in the front of the house. "What are you doing?"

"Skinny dipping." I answered, and she snuck a peek at me, which I pretended not to notice. Her face turned a deeper red anyway.

"Skinny dipping?" She questioned, like she thought I was joking. I dropped all my clothes in a pile on the concrete and slid into the pool, while she stood on the blue tiles lining the perimeter, not moving.

"Yes. Don't act like you've never wanted to try it." I clung to the edge of the pool and stared up at her, trying to convince her to join me without having to say it out loud. "Come on, Tori. It's dark, it's not like we can see anything. Just do something immature with me for once." I watched her roll her eyes at me, but she caved and started to pull her shirt over her head. She was wonderfully uncomfortable with the whole thing but she did it anyway. I vaguely remember how much darker her skin looked beneath her clothes, how she didn't have any tan lines, and how I felt self-conscious about my nearly transparent skin for about three seconds, until she leapt into the pool a couple of feet away from me.

When she surfaced, her face wasn't red anymore, and she was smiling. The pool lights were off and the combination of light from the nearest streetlight and the crescent moon weren't quite enough to light the water. She looked like a floating head.

"This is probably the most rebellious thing I've ever done." She admitted, slightly out of breath. I laughed as she swam closer, but I couldn't find the right words to make fun of her, so I passed on that opportunity.

"Have you ever had a real best friend before? A female one, I mean. Beck doesn't count." She dipped below the water for a moment, spitting some out when she popped back up, still expecting an answer from me.

"I had one really good friend in middle school…but I don't know if she was a _best _friend. Best friends stick around, don't they? Obviously she didn't." I swam backward across the pool, slowly gliding to the other side. "Have you?" She didn't say anything for a moment, and just kept treading water in the center of the pool.

"No." She slowly floated away from me, back to the other side, near the ladder. Her arms stretched out, grabbing a hold of the edge of the pool to keep her in place. I grinned in the darkness and whispered in response,

"Then I'm your first."

…

It's Friday and the clock says 2:43 AM but I am still awake. I should be sleeping. This is going to be a busy day for me. My fascist parents made me an appointment with their favorite therapist days ago, knowing they'd be able to force me to go. After another horrible day at school, I have no choice but to go across town and see this stupid shrink. Maybe if I fake an illness I can go to the hospital instead, and stay there for a while.

A thin black notebook lies on my stomach while I am stretched out flat on my back in bed, and my fingers play with the ragged edges while I avoid opening it up. I need to read it eventually, but I'm afraid to. With one deep breath, I flip it open as fast as I can, and tilt it up so I can see it. I turn a few pages, until I see my own face, put together with paper and graphite, staring back at me. It's smudged in several places. I'm sure there were probably several parts that she erased and redrew over time. My eyes move to my name and start to follow the words down the page.

_- Jade West is the worst person I've ever had the misfortune to know. It's no coincidence that she shares her last name with the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz._

_- The very first time I met her, I'd just spilled my drink on Beck and was trying to help him clean it up. I guess I didn't make a very good first impression, but now she honestly hates me, and she has no reason to. I can't help but wonder why she feels so threatened by me. I don't want her boyfriend, though she does have very good taste in boys._

_- Jade is an evil, demented, psychologically screwed up person, but she's very unique. Never in my life have I met anyone like her. I think that's why I want her to like me so much. She's awful to me, and any normal person would just avoid anyone who treated them the way she's been treating me, but I can't help it. She's kind of fascinating, really. I wish I knew what went on in her head._

_- She has to know by now that I'm not after Beck. I don't understand why she still hates me so much. Am I really that awful?_

_- Jade terrifies me. I feel like I suddenly have no idea who I am, and nobody has ever made me feel that way before. Why do I need her to like me? Why does she refuse to?_

_- I wondered for a long time what a guy like Beck was doing with Jade, but now I think I understand. Sometimes I feel like I might be attracted to her. I think everybody is, to some degree. _

_- Jade is so irritating. Just when I think we might possibly be friends, she does something that proves otherwise. The worse she treats me…the more I try to hate her, the more I want her to like me. I don't understand why she doesn't. _

- _I can't pretend that I hate her back any longer. I don't know how she does it. Maybe she really does still hate me. I don't know if I ever felt that way about her, even in the beginning. No matter how I felt then, I can't deny the way I feel now. I find myself staring a lot. Every time she touches me or even comes near me, I can feel my heart speed up. I often wonder what it would be like to be with her – REALLY be with her. _

_- I think I'm in love with Jade. I'm a better actress than I thought. Somehow she doesn't know it. _

_- Maybe Jade does know how I feel about her. I can't decide if all the looks she gives me, the things she says, the things she does… maybe that's just Jade being her usual, cruelly seductive self, or maybe she's doing it because she feels the same way…or maybe she's just doing it to torture me. _

_- She's pregnant and she thinks that I can help her. That I have any idea how to comfort her. I wish I could help. I don't know what to do but I want to do something. _

_- Jade has the ability to be a decent person. Maybe it's just the hormones, but she's finally stopped hating me. She depends on me, and I want to believe that she's doing it because she likes me – because I'm her friend. _

_- Jade is my best friend now. She's the first person who I truly feel like I can tell all my secrets to. Andre is a great friend too, but it's different with him. There are a few things I just can't talk to him about. I think Jade would understand more than he ever could. _

_- She's starting to show now and I can't keep pretending like she's nothing but my best friend. I know – I'm positive – that I'm in love with her, and I have been for a long time. It's not as easy to hide as it used to be. I can't lie next to her in her bed, watching movies or crime show reruns in the dark and pretend like I don't want to reach out and touch her. I CAN'T touch her though. It's like she's covered in poison now. On the rare occasion that she hugs me, I almost get sick. I can feel her swollen stomach against me and all I can think about is how there's a part of Beck in there. I like Beck. He's a good guy and a great friend, but I want what he has. I think I deserve it more than he does._

_- I don't know how much longer I can stand to be her friend. I'm not sure how or when it happened, but I love her, and I want her to be with me, but she can't be. She's tied to Beck now, permanently, and I never really had a chance with her anyway. This weird friendship we've got is the best I'll ever get from her._

_- Maybe my first impression of Jade was more accurate. _

By the time I finish reading my section of the book, I feel sick. I want to throw up, or maybe just cry. I'm pretty sure I knew, deep down, how she truly felt about me. I think I subconsciously tortured her with that knowledge. I wasn't just toying with a little crush, and I knew that.


	10. Chapter 10

_**Very very sorry I keep taking so long. I've been far from motivated to write something like this lately... I apologize a thousand times. Thank you so so much for sticking with me.**_

* * *

><p>It's Friday and I'm really not sure how I feel anymore. Am I sad? Am I angry? Or am I just nothing? I know that it's unusual to be this way for so long but I don't know how to stop and I really don't care anymore if I ever do.<p>

I was like this for a long time when I was younger, and I know that's why my parents are _supposedly_ so worried. They want me to talk to someone once or twice and solve all my problems sitting on a tiny couch in a cute little office that smells like clean linen candles so that they won't have to fight over who gets to pay for the medication this time when talking doesn't give them the outcome they're looking for.

I spent a lot of my life unhappy, but the past few years I've been as far away from that as I've ever been. There were enough distractions around to stop me from thinking about anything, but now I've pushed all of those things out of my life, and there's nothing left to do.

School goes by too quickly. For the first time in weeks, I actually want to be at Hollywood Arts. Public school was never really a legitimate option when mom and dad threatened me with it. My parents would rather not put any effort into changing schools, and they'd already called the therapist anyway. It's the last place that I want to go today. I want to go hide in the library until tomorrow but it's all the way across the school and my dad is waiting for me by my locker the second I leave class. He doesn't look any happier than I do, but he forces me into his car and drives me across town to a giant brick building in an empty neighborhood anyway. He leaves me at the door and I could run away if I wanted to, but he'd find out eventually. She can't make me talk, so I might as well waste an hour on a doctor's couch instead of wandering around this shitty neighborhood. At least this way I won't get yelled at.

The doctor's office is on the third floor and of course, dad didn't bother to help me get there, so I wander through the ground floor trying to find an elevator, only to find that there isn't one. There's a gigantic staircase wide enough to fit ten people shoulder to shoulder along the side of the building and I climb it, wondering what original use this building could have possibly had that would require a staircase this big. Once I reach the third floor the hallways are strangely narrow. Most of the lights are burnt out and the whole floor looks like a much better place to get raped than get your head shrunk.

At the end of the hallway there's a door with a laminated piece of paper on it in place of an actual sign. That's incredibly reassuring. On the other side there are a few children playing with some bacteria infested toys on the ground, and I'm sure I must be in the wrong place, but then an incredibly large blonde woman behind a desk looks up at me and asks,

"You Jade?" I nod and stare at the children a little while longer. One has a chin covered in drool, another has an orange stain on his shirt that I can't identify, and the third child is staring blankly into space with his gooey mouth open. Kids are gross.

"Take a seat, she'll be with you in a minute." The receptionist's words barely register with me and I don't take her advice. A moment later, a slim brunette woman wearing khaki pants and a blood red shirt steps into the waiting area and motions to me without saying a word. I follow her into a tiny dark room with a large wooden desk, a metal folding chair, and a small orange couch stuffed inside. There's one small window in the room with a perfect view of the AutoZone across the street.

"Sorry about my office. I just moved here from Minnesota. New kid gets the crappy room." She smiles at me and urges me to sit down. I do as she says, mostly because I'm curious what kind of unusual fabric the couch is upholstered with. It looks like some kind of velvet, but it's softer than that.

"I'm Doctor Matthews, but you can call me Lauren. You can call me anything, really, if it makes you feel better." She looks uncomfortable when I don't say anything. "Jade, right? I love that name. I always thought that if I ever had a daughter of my own, I might name her Jade." She pauses again. It's kind of fun to watch her feel so awkward, but I pity her a little bit. I wouldn't want her job. I wouldn't want to deal with people like me.

"I know that nobody really wants to talk about their problems with a stranger, so I guess maybe I'll tell you about myself. I grew up just outside of Minneapolis. I have two brothers, and I had an older sister who passed away the year I was born. I went to college in Milwaukee, where I met my husband Nathan. We just got married last March. He's in the movie business... Mostly documentaries that nobody's ever seen, but he's getting there... I guess that's all I can really think of to tell you. Do you have any questions?" I shake my head. We're both silent for a moment. I study the picture frames and books covering her desk, but I can't tell from them what kind of person Lauren is.

"I, umm... I see this isn't your first time visiting a therapist." She studies the papers in front of her but doesn't seem too surprised.

"I had an abusive babysitter when I was a child. My parents thought it affected me more than it did. They had trouble accepting that I'm not psychologically disturbed and this is just how I am."

"Five therapists before the age of thirteen. That's a lot."

"My parents were looking for an answer they couldn't get from the first four. The fifth one gave me pills so they finally stopped."

"Did the pills help you?"

"No." I answer, and now I realize how much I've told her already. I didn't intend to speak at all, but it's too late now. "They kind of made me want to kill myself."

"That happens a lot with teenagers, unfortunately. The-"

"The hormones. I know." She nods uncomfortably. "It was a long time ago. I was fine." She changes the subject.

"So...tell me why your parents think you need to be here." I clam up all of a sudden and it's not even intentional. She stares at me for a moment and I open my mouth, but my mouth is dry.

"I, umm..." I cough and she reaches below her desk, pulling a water bottle out of a small mini-fridge. It's Aquafina, which I hate because it tastes like crap and water isn't even supposed to have a taste, but I drink some of it anyway to sooth my throat. "My...uhh...best friend, I guess... died in a car accident about a month ago. My...well I guess my parents are probably right, sending me here, but...I mean, I can psychoanalyze myself. I know that I feel guilty, like it's _my_ fault, but I also know that it isn't. And I know that I feel that way because I treated her badly toward the end and I never had the chance to apologize. I _know_ that there's nothing I could have done to change it, but that doesn't stop me from feeling this way."

"It's okay to feel like that, but it doesn't mean that I can't help you. Sometimes if you just talk about something long enough, you'll find that you have a lot more to say than you thought you did." She glances at her watch and smiles at me. "I don't think that there's anything wrong with you. I know as well as anyone how some people can't accept that others are just born different. I do think that you could feel a lot better if you talked about what you're feeling right now to someone who is on the outside. If you do choose to come back next time, we can plan on talking about your friend. Think of some things you loved about her, some things you didn't...anything, really. I'd love to hear all about her." I don't know if she's wanting me to write a big list of Tori things and bring it to her next time, but if I really had a _choice_ there wouldn't be a next time. I'll be talking less next week.

"Now what do you say we get out of here a little early? If anyone asks, we both stayed until 4." I glance at the clock on her desk. It's only 3:40. "Hopefully I'll see you next week."

…

It's Saturday and I wake up to the noise of rain on my window. I think about showering but it sounds like too much effort, so I go downstairs instead. Mom's gone, and Dad finally went back to his own house, though he'll probably be back to lecture me some more later.

I look at the date on my phone and it suddenly hits me, what today is. I don't know how I feel about it. I guess it still hasn't really sunk in.

The doorbell rings and I walk toward the front door, hoping it isn't Dad, because he's the last person I want to see right now, but the only person who would have any reason to visit me. I pull it open and a small bouquet of roses are right in front of me. Beck is standing there with a hopeless look on his face, and he says to me,

"I know you probably don't want to see me right now, but I didn't want you to be alone." I stare at the flowers a little longer and I start to cry, letting myself fall into his arms, crushing the roses as I hold onto him, sobbing because we were supposed to be a family today.

…

It was a Thursday when it happened. I was sitting in class with my feet propped up on Tori's lap because, already, they were starting to hurt. I only had nearly six months to go and my feet felt like they were about to explode. She was messing with my laces, and I wouldn't have put it past her to tie them together, though she didn't.

Beck hadn't come to school that day. He had an audition somewhere and was due back before sixth period, though it was hardly worth it. We weren't getting along at the time - we'd gotten into a fight the day before and he saw no reason to apologize, so I had refused to speak to him for a full twenty-four hours. I could have gone much longer. I knew he would give in eventually. He had no choice.

Sikowitz was rambling on and on about some coconut vision he'd had and most of us weren't really listening. The morning sickness had already stopped and I'd gone weeks without throwing up, but that morning I'd woken up with a stomachache and had almost broken that streak. As I sat in Sikowitz's classroom, I started to feel sicker. My sides hurt more than my stomach ached, but everything on my body hurt every once in a while, back then. Eventually it got to be too much, so I left to use the restroom, barely getting there before I felt something start to trickle down my leg. I stopped in the hallway, right outside the girl's room door, and reached beneath my skirt, running a finger along my thigh that came back covered in a red liquid I didn't realize was blood until the thought slithered into my brain a moment later.

I stood there in the hallway for a minute with my eyes wide and my mouth hanging open. I could hardly move, let alone do anything about it. I was _not_ supposed to be bleeding. Something was seriously wrong, but I couldn't really comprehend it until I made my way back to Sikowitz's room, with my stomach killing me. I bent down beside Tori and whispered in her ear, but by that point I'd started crying from fear, and she couldn't understand me.

"What?" I nearly choked on the air I couldn't get into my lungs, and she started at me with a shocked look on her face when she realized how distraught I was.

"I'm _bleeding_," I told her, "get me to a fucking hospital."

"Uh, Sikowitz!" She shouted, standing up and wrapping her arms around me. She said something to him but I couldn't understand her. I just sobbed into Tori's shirt while she held onto me. I don't know if it was because I was bleeding or because I was panicking, but my head was spinning and I could hardly stand, even with Tori's help.

She steered me outside into someone's car - I don't even know who drove me to the hospital. I was too busy crying in the back seat while my sides cramped up, with Tori holding me in her arms, petting my hair while she whispered to me like I was a child.

"It'll be okay, you're gonna be fine, shh, baby you'll be alright, we're almost there, I'm right here, you'll be okay, breathe, take a deep breath, calm down." An endless string of soothing words streamed out of her mouth, but all she could do was hold onto me until we got to the emergency room.

"_No_." I groaned, still in disbelief. It never really made sense to me, even after we got to the hospital. All I knew is that I _hurt _and I was bleeding and panicking to the point that I nearly passed out. The only person I had was Tori, and she couldn't even stay with me the whole time. The ER nurses forced her to stay in the waiting room while they wheeled me away, and I could hardly breathe. I started hyperventilating and black specks blocked my vision, eventually fading into complete darkness for a moment, before I was in a white bed in a tiny, sterile room. Beck was sitting beside me, with my hand in his, and he was crying. _He was legitimately crying. _It took a lot to make Beck cry - hell, it took a lot to make him _smile_ - and I'd only ever seen him do it a couple of times.

He reached out to brush my hair out of my face as I tried to sit up. He shook his head, demanding I lay back down, and then he climbed up into the tiny bed with me. Beck wrapped his arms around my aching body and kissed the top of my head four times before he said anything.

"We lost her," he said.

"What?" I understood him the first time, but it took hearing the words again before I could really accept it.

"The baby...it would've been a girl. We lost her. You miscarried." I couldn't do anything but cry, and for the rest of the night, that was all I did. I laid in that bed beside my boyfriend, sobbing into his shirt while he held back tears himself. My parents came, but Dad had to leave for something work related after an hour, and mom left when visiting hours ended at 9. The nurses pitied Beck, so they let him stay with me until the morning. He said that Tori had sat in the waiting room while I'd been in surgery, but because she wasn't family or the father, they wouldn't let her back to see me, so she'd left an hour before I woke up.

I remember at the time I was angry that she didn't stay. I know that if she'd waited until they let her back, I probably wouldn't have said a single word to her, but I wanted her there and she _wasn't_ there. Never mind that she'd dropped everything and taken me to the hospital without questioning it. She was my _best friend_ and when I woke up and I was _upset_ and I was _hurting_ and I was _mourning_ she wasn't there.


	11. Chapter 11

It's Saturday night and a half-eaten pizza sits on the coffee table in front of me. I'm starving, but it looks anything but appetizing, and I haven't moved in hours. I'm not about to change that. Beck has his arms wrapped around me from behind, and I think he might be asleep now, but I couldn't be bothered to look. The main reason he's still here is the small fact that he's warmer and more comfortable than my couch is.

Some horrifically fake screaming is coming from the TV, and I forget for a moment which movie I'm watching. They all start to blend together, after a while. They're all the same. People get naked and then they die. People tell a lot of jokes and then they die. People do drugs and drink alcohol and then they die. Only the pure, innocent, boring ones get to live. Unfortunately real life is nothing like slasher films.

A long, long time ago, Beck asked me why I liked these movies so much, and I told him that I don't. I hate horror movies. There's rarely any bit of originality in them. They're predictable, and the acting is usually pretty bad, and the characters are always complete morons. If I were a character in any one of the movies in my collection, I would probably kill myself before the killer had a chance to, just because all the other characters I'd be stuck with are so aggravatingly stupid I wouldn't be able to stand it. Why are the girls always naked? Why do they go everywhere alone? Why don't they just turn the fucking lights on once in a while? Why do they run up the stairs when the killer is chasing them? It's like they're aware that their only purpose in the movie is to die, so they do everything to make that possible. I _hate _horror movies.

The thing is, I love to watch them. It makes my heart race a little, watching these fictional people be so stupid. I love that moment at the beginning of the movie when you've met all the characters and can already decide what order they're going to die in. I love placing my bets on who's gonna live the longest, and whether or not they'll survive through the full movie. I love seeing all these fake people living out the worst part of their terrible fictional lives, until they come to a violent and wonderfully disgusting end. I love watching horror movies and thinking to myself, _my life may suck, but at least I didn't finish off some mediocre sex with a double impalement at the hands of a crazy guy with a spear, a burlap sack over his head, and a bit of an oedipus complex. Odds are, my life will never be this bad._

Beck has never really understood that, for some reason. He doesn't see how it's possible to hate something and enjoy doing it at the same time. Beck quit watching movies with me a long time ago. Tonight is an exception. He says that it's no fun to listen to me complain through the whole thing, but au contraire, I think that's the best part.

Tori used to watch these with me. Nothing too bad, of course. She was a wuss. Not quite the scaredy-cat I'd had her pegged as since we met, but still a wuss nonetheless. She made me rate all my movies on a scale of one to ten, based on how gory they were. She absolutely refused to watch anything seven or higher, and would only watch sixes when she was in a specific mood. One thing about Tori - she actually liked my complaining. She told me that the movies were a lot less scary when I was there to point out how stupid they were.

"Do you have the next one?" Beck scares me when he finally speaks. I was so sure he was asleep.

"The next one?" I don't even know what movie I just finished watching.

"Yeah, there are like, nine of these, aren't there?" I stare at the TV for a moment as Beck pushes me forward so he can lean close enough to reach the pizza box. The cast list starts moving up the screen, reminding me what movie it is.

"Umm, the original series had six, actually. There's a prequel, but it's really boring, and then, uhh...two remakes, I think."

"So nine movies."

"Well, yeah, I guess so..." I slide out of his arms and crawl across the living room, to the TV stand where all my movies are. I really don't feel like watching this entire series, so I slide my finger along the row of DVD cases, absentmindedly pulling a few possibilities out while Beck takes the rest of the pizza to the kitchen, since it's obvious I'm not going to eat it.

Honestly, I'm surprised he's still here. He's sat on the couch, holding me while we watched nine movies together without speaking. and for what reason? Because we almost had a baby together? Because I'm a complete wreck and he's worried about my sanity? He even used to steer clear of me when I was on my period - mostly, I'm sure, because he knew he wouldn't be getting any, but also because he couldn't handle my mood swings, and now, here I am, stuck in the downward position, waiting to swing back up, and he's here. He's not here to push me, but maybe he's here to sit and watch me struggle.

"Jade, don't..." Beck reaches out and pushes the DVD case I've subconsciously chosen out of my hands. It hits the ground and I stare down at the red face of Stephen King's _Children of the Corn_, and I just stop functioning. I can't breathe properly and I start to cry, and I'm hyperventilating or something. I guess realizing that my _daughter _never had the chance to join a creepy, anti-adult religious cult and kill me in its name has forced it in harder. It sinks in even deeper and I still can't quite comprehend the fact that I was supposed to have a child by now. I would have had a daughter. A little girl. A little girl who could have grown up and gone through her life being told "you look just like your mother," as I have. A little girl who would have thought they were all crazy, because hopefully she would have looked more like her father.

That thought right there stops me. I look at Beck and the thought that he would have been a father - _we_ would have been _parents - _just kills me. I don't know how he's feeling. He didn't have the chance to meet her - he never had the chance to form that bond, the one that I had gone three months thinking didn't exist, only to find out that it did, once it was ripped out of me.

I haven't really thought about this in so long. I never really _did _think about it, after that weekend in the hospital. Even before the miscarriage, I simply did not put enough thought into the fact that I was going to be a mother. I thought about it, sure, but I don't know if I really took it seriously. I hadn't even known until the baby was gone that it was a girl. I remember being too scared at my last doctor's appointment to find out. I could have, but I didn't. I decided I would wait until the next appointment, but then the next time I saw a doctor, it was a counselor at the hospital, trying to talk to me about grief when all I really wanted to do was sleep and never wake up.

…

It was a Friday when Tori finally visited me. She certainly didn't hurry - It was nearly 7 o'clock by the time I had a visitor other than Beck and my parents. She walked through the door and stopped barely two feet inside, scared out of her mind. I stared at her and I didn't say a word, and she looked like she was about to wet her pants. At the time, I didn't understand why she was so frightened, but looking back, I realize just how well she knew me. She was scared because she knew how I was going to react.

"I...Jade..." Beck took a hint and stood up to leave, patting Tori on the back as she choked back tears in the doorway. She couldn't get a full sentence out for a while, but I didn't bother to help.

"I don't know what to say. I mean...I want to tell you how sorry I am, and that I'm here if you need me, but I know you'll probably be hearing that a lot and it really doesn't mean anything. That's just what you say to someone when you feel bad...and I just... I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. Do you need anything? I will seriously do anything that you need me to do, I'll-"

"You don't have to pity me." I finally spit a few words out, and it surprised her. She started to take another step in, but she hesitated with her foot in the air. "You've done that enough already." I wish that Tori wasn't so stupid. If I had the chance, I would make sure she knew that it was the hormones, and the stress, and the grief, and the fear talking, and that I didn't mean it. I really didn't mean it, and she should have known that, but she didn't. She couldn't tell that I didn't mean it. If I could take back everything I said to her after that point, as cliched as it is, I would do it in a second.

"I don't..." I only just barely remember what I said to her. I was in such a terrible place at the time that nothing was going through my brain before it came out of my mouth. I remember shouting at her, angry, _vicious _for no reason. She didn't deserve it. She was being a good friend, but I couldn't see that - I couldn't comprehend the small little fact that I didn't have to be alone. I _wasn't _alone until I made myself that way.

I spit out some sentence about how the whole reason that Tori and I were friends was in a fucking jar or something, waiting to be disposed of with all the spent needles and latex gloves like trash. I made it very clear to her that we were only friends because of the baby, but never once had that been clear to me. It wasn't true, but I told her that it was, and eventually she believed me.

I told her that I didn't need her anymore. I fed her a line about my hormones - that they'd messed with my head, that they were my excuse for ever befriending her. And they were, to some degree. It was a valid excuse, which is why she so readily believed it. My emotions were in overdrive and I wasn't myself when I went to her, but that didn't change the fact that I really _had _grown to like Tori. I liked her a lot. Getting to know her - _really_ know her - was one of the best things I ever did, and I'm glad that I did it, even if it ended so badly. Even if it ended with me telling her that our entire friendship was a moment of weakness, a creation to be blamed on my diseased, hormonal mind, coupled with her horrible and pathetic need for my approval.

Of all the many times I've told her _"I'm not your friend," _this was the worst, because for the first time, I think she truly believed it.

…

It's Friday and I'm back in Lauren's office and once again she has me prattling on like a fool, talking when I never wanted to in the first place. I'm telling her every little story I can think of, listing tiny things I knew about Tori that I'm not even sure she herself knew. I tell Lauren about all her little quirks and the things that most people didn't get close even to know about her.

"She kept packets of salt in her purse and took them everywhere with her. Every time we ate at a fast food restaurant, she had to steal a handful of them before we could leave. She used _so_ much of it. I don't know how her body could handle that much salt. She was just really weird with food. She always dipped her french fries in mayonnaise, and she just...she dipped everything in something. That was one of the only things she wouldn't let me tease her about. She'd just ignore me and go back to dipping saltine crackers in ketchup..."

Lauren is staring at me with a smile on her face but she doesn't say anything. I look back at her for a few seconds and the silence makes me wonder what time it is. I feel like I've been talking forever.

"What? Is our time up?" Her eyes open wide and she looks surprised that I'm out of story-telling mode for the first time since I got here.

"Oh, no. We've still got about ten minutes." She grins and I kick myself for letting her get to me. It's too late to stop talking now, but I have to wonder what it is about her that makes me want to tell her so much. "Tori sounds wonderful."

"I always thought she was really boring, and then when I g- When we became friends... She ummm... Tori was one of those people that seemed pretty normal on the outside, but then once she got comfortable around you she was _really_ weird...but weird in a good way, I guess."

"I've found most people are like that." I suppose she's right. I'm certainly not like that, nor have I ever been, but "normal" people, as we call them, are usually not that normal once you get to know them.

"You said you didn't like her when you first met her. What changed your mind?"

"I don't know...a lot of little things, I guess. We weren't exactly _friends _for a long time."

"Why did that change?"

"You already know, don't you? My parents told you about my..." She shakes her head and lifts her left eyebrow, but she doesn't look as confused as I expected.

"Your parents only told me that you were having a hard time dealing with the loss of your friend. I don't want to hear details from anyone but you." I feel as if she's manipulating me into telling her these things. She's playing with my brain, making me feel so very unlike myself, though that thought doesn't quite make me want to stop talking. I know it's not good to get into that subject now, so I force myself to stand up.

"I think it's time for me to go." Lauren nods, not bothered at all by my exit.

"I'll see you next week, then."

I take my time getting back down to the ground level, and when I walk outside, my father isn't there. Assuming he's running late, I sit down on the curb to wait. He doesn't show.

Minutes tick by and I wrap a strand of my hair around my finger, twirling it around until it's so tight that my finger starts to go numb. I realize that my roots have grown out far enough for me to be able to see the border between my synthetically black hair and the dark blonde/light brown/indeterminate crap color it's turned naturally. I was blonde as a child, and it's weird now to think about it. It only lasted the first few years of my life until it started getting darker, and I have to wonder if my life would be any different if I were a blonde. Would I have been one of those stereotypical blondes? A cheerleader with half a brain and seven different stupid boys waiting to sleep with me while I go through life blissfully unaware that I am a moron? Would I have dyed my hair anyway and ended up exactly the way that I am now?

It's getting late, and I'm starving. I wonder what's keeping my dad. The likelihood of him having a decent excuse for not being here is slim, and I know that he forgot. I could call him, right now, and he could come to get me, but I keep waiting instead. I want to see how long it takes him to realize he's forgotten. I want to see how long it takes my parents to realize I'm gone.

A car pulls up to the curb and I've been spacing out for so long that it takes me a while to pull back to reality and realize it's not my father's car.

"Waiting for someone?" Andre is sitting in the driver's seat, with his door open and one foot outside of the car.

"My dad forgot about me. Surprise." He frowns for a fraction of a second but his mouth straightens out. I'm sure he, of all people, knows right now just how much it hurts to be pitied.

"Well, hop in. I'll give you a ride home." He waves at me and closes the door without even waiting to see me stand up. He flips on his headlights, because the sun is starting to go down, and sticks his arm out the open driver's side window, drumming his fingers on the side of the door.

"You can give me a ride," I tell him, "but please _don't_ bring me home."


	12. Chapter 12

It's late Friday night and I'm staring at the ceiling of Andre's bedroom wondering why I do the things I do.

His house has always been freezing every time I've been here, but right now it feels like a sauna and I can't think over the heat under my skin. My body aches, in a good way, but I feel guilty and I know he does too, though neither of us has talked. The ceiling fan spins above me and my eyes try to follow a black speck on one of the blades as it goes round and round and round. Andre's arm brushes against mine and I flinch involuntarily.

"Do you feel any better?" He asks, and I take my time responding even though it's an easy question to answer.

"No. Do you?" Out of the corner of my eye I can see him looking at me. He shakes his head a little.

"No." We lie in mutual silence for several minutes and I want to leave but I can't get up. I want to just blink my eyes and be home, like magic. I want my parents to leave me alone, and if I did have magic powers I'd bring Tori back too, so I could revive my sanity for a minute or two.

"Are we bad people?" It sounds like such a Tori thing to say and I can't resist turning to him now. I pull the sheets up to my neck and hide my insecurities beneath them when I can't answer him right away.

"I don't know about bad, but I think we're both insane."

"Yeah, probably." He lowers his voice and I can barely hear him as he adds, "We can blame Tori for that."

"_Fucking Tori._ She ruined my life."

"Bet she did it on purpose." He's trying to joke around and make me feel better but it isn't working and now I'm just crying. I'm so horribly embarrassed, I just want to disappear. I want to go away and live in a world where I never knew Tori and I never knew Beck. A world where I never slept with the only person who has even tried to understand my pain. I want to die, but not permanently. I want to join her but I'm not ready for that yet.

Andre obviously doesn't know what to do, but he takes a big risk and moves closer to me, pulling me up against his chest while he surely prays I don't claw my way out of his grasp. I don't, I just lay there and cry like a little baby and I want to die even more than before.

"Jade?" I take a deep breath and acknowledge him with the absence of my sobbing. "You're not suicidal, are you?" Just then, it hits me.

"You're the only person who's ever asked me that." I don't give him an outright answer. "Nobody takes me seriously enough to think I might be considering going after her." He's gone completely rigid beside me. Maybe he took that as a yes.

"Why would you want to?"

"I don't know. I miss her a lot. She was my best friend and...I loved her." I surprise myself more than him when I say that. I don't know why that possibility hasn't fully appeared in my head until now. Everything would make more sense if I'd been in love with her. Suddenly my memory is blank and I can't remember how she's ever made me feel. I don't know if that's a plausible answer. "I mean...you know the feeling, right?"

"I don't want to die though." I finally give him the response he was originally looking for. "But I keep thinking to myself...if I _did _would anybody care? Would they just be over it in a week like they were with her? If I died, would everyone just go on with their lives, and I would just become some _taboo_ subject that nobody ever lets themselves think about?"

"They think about it, Jade. They just keep all the sadness to themselves." With a pause, he starts rubbing my back, either more comfortable with me or just distracted. "That's usually how it works. For a while, everyone mourns together...then you just do it in private."

"I'm tired of doing that. I don't want to do that. I want to be sad in public and not have people yell at me or tell me how _worried _they are. I just want to be sad for once, is there something wrong with that?" He laughs but it's a depressing and misplaced laugh.

"Nah, I'm pretty bad at keeping my feelings to myself too." Sharing my socially unacceptable method of grieving with him really doesn't make me feel much better, but my eyes have finally dried up.

"Andre, did you... That song you sang with Tori, sophomore year...was that about me?" I know it was, but he doesn't answer right away. He sighs, and his fingers curl into a fist against my spine.

"I kinda hoped you wouldn't find out."

"What we just did sounds a whole lot better if you've written a love song about me."

"Guess that's true." He cringes and his breath gets louder. "Man, Beck's gonna kill me."

"No he won't." He just _had _to bring up Beck's name. I was having a great time, pretending he didn't exist for a few minutes there. "_We broke up_, and he's _not_ a jealous person. He doesn't give a shit what I do anymore. ...Just as long as it doesn't involve crying. He has a problem with emotion." Everything's gotten awkward again and I'm seeping into the mattress, trying to disappear. It's not working. I spit out a joke to try to fix it. "And a small penis." Now, Andre's trying so hard not to laugh it's hurting him, and I can smile at that.

"I'm not laughing." He chokes on his words and I let them go without saying anything. "Probably still shouldn't tell him though."

"Yeah, definitely." I finally remember what I was originally going to ask him. "When you wrote that song though... Why'd you never tell me?"

"You scared me."

"I scared you?" Not the answer I was looking for but it makes a lot of sense. "What about now?"

"You still scare me."

"Do you think... Is that why Tori didn't tell me?" His hand's massaging my back again and I'm not sure which one of us finds it more soothing.

"You figured me out, but not her?" He doesn't answer but I figure that must be a yes.

"You wrote me a song."

"She helped. She sang it with me."

"True... I guess I just never thought it was that serious. I knew she had a crush on me...but I never imagined anyone could actually love me. Especially her."

"That's the dumbest thing you've ever said." He laughs and I could say the same about him. "You're beautiful, and...unique. Tori liked that. _I _like that. Anyone could."

"Why don't you just stop talking before you give me another reason to hurt you?"

"That's why you scare me." The conversation ends here and I close my eyes, finally feeling comfortable against him. He's been fighting sleep for an hour now and he goes quickly, but I'm not so lucky. I get to lie in his bed completely paralyzed, curled up beside him. It feels less wrong now, somehow. Every part of me but my mouth had been shouting "no" a few hours ago, when it had started. We'd talked a little in the car as he drove me here but it wasn't anything remarkable. He told me that his grandmother was out of town with some friends until tomorrow night, and we'd both expressed surprise that that crazy mess of a woman had any. I cracked some stupid joke and he made an even dumber one. The subject had turned to Tori, as it always did anymore, and we were quiet for a while, until he parked the car. Saying that I was surprised when he leaned over and kissed me square on the mouth is an understatement, but that didn't stop me from kissing him back, or from crawling over the console into his lap, nearly falling out of the car when he opened the door and led me inside. I knew it wasn't right and it wasn't going to fix anything, but I let him take me to his bedroom anyway, and soon enough he was kissing me and touching me and my body was screaming that everything was better but my mind and my heart were still a melted, scrambled mess inside of me and now I'm not sure where we stand, or even where _I _do.

My brain crawls into sleeping mode, and I drift off while imagining what it would have been like with Tori. For a second, I tell myself I'm going to find out, but then I fall asleep before I can remember that that's impossible.

…

It was a Tuesday when I went back to school, against the wishes of my doctors, my parents, and my so-called friends. My body was healed, and that was all I was concerned about.. Everyone was so worried about my mental health, but no one entertained the thought that maybe I was fine. I'd lost a baby, not a vital organ. I could live. Sure, I'd been devastated at first, but it only took me a few days to realize that things were better off that way. No child deserved to have me as its mother. Missing out on this world isn't such a bad thing, if you ask me. Life just hurts. My baby didn't have the time to hurt.

Tori took a while to approach me. I caught her watching me at my locker all morning, and she kept staring when she thought I wasn't looking at lunch, which we all ate in silence. The rest of the group was being just as cautious with me as she was, and I hated it. I didn't bother to talk or give them any kind of sign that I was okay, but they should have known. They were my friends. The only people who talked to me at all that day were Beck and Lane, and the latter did more of the talking.

I went home after school and I passed out in my room. I slept all through the night and still felt tired at 7 the next morning, when I finally crawled out of bed after trying to tell myself for half an hour that I didn't have time to make it to school by 8, and therefore shouldn't go.

I was still half asleep when I stumbled inside and went to my locker by myself. I didn't bother to find Beck and he didn't bother to find me. I didn't start the day alone very often.

Just as I got my locker open, a flash of brown and green appeared next to me. Tori had straightened her hair that day, I remember because she'd only done it a handful of times since the day I met her. She was wearing an ugly green sweater that was hanging slightly off her left shoulder, though it obviously wasn't meant to be worn that way. She had a cup of coffee in her hand, like some kind of peace offering. My blood boiled just looking at her.

"It's kind of cold now but I thought you might need some caffeine today." She held it out but I didn't move. I just stared at her and I couldn't even part my lips enough to breathe out my mouth. "Jade?" I blinked. "Are you still mad at me?" I didn't really feel any way at all toward anybody at the time, but I guess subconsciously I'd convinced myself that I _was_ mad, because without even thinking about it I grabbed the cup from her, popped off the lid, and dumped it down the front of her shirt, before slamming my locker closed and walking away, leaving her at the exact point where we'd started.

Instead of going to class, I then went straight to the janitor's closet, leaving the lights out as I sat down on the floor. I rested my head against a trash can while I cried because I definitely was _not _okay and I was never going to be.

…

It's Saturday morning and I walk into my house feeling a lot better than I had the night before. The sound of the door closing has alerted my parents, and they nearly sprint into the entryway, from the kitchen, looking relieved and angry at the same time. Dad's always fucking here when he thinks I have a problem, but I can't even rely on him to realize he's forgotten me on a sidewalk.

"Where've you been?" Nobody's even going to acknowledge the fact that it's entirely _not _my fault that I didn't come home last night.

"Oh, just out. Spent the night with some black guy who picked me up off the street when _you _didn't." It's funny because my dad's been a judgmental, hotheaded racist since the day I was born and even he doesn't take me seriously enough to take offense to that.

"We've both been calling you all morning!" My mother raises her voice with me and I suddenly want to slap her. I've never really felt that way before. We don't exactly have the greatest relationship - we don't really have one at all - but we get along. We don't exactly fight. We're not like most women and for that, I guess I'm grateful.

"And by that time it really didn't matter, did it?" I push past them and head for my room, but they stop me not even two steps away.

"Jade, we're sorry, but you should have called and reminded one of us. Somebody would have come to get you. You can't just spend a whole night out somewhere and not tell us!"

"I'm depressed, not an idiot. I know how to take care of myself, so you can stop pretending you care about any of my real problems." I make it to my room without any more obstacles and I lie down on my bed, realizing that this is the most I've really talked to my parents in a long time. Honestly, it wouldn't be difficult to lay the blame for everything on them, but it's too hard to pry it from my own shoulders.


	13. Chapter 13

It's Tuesday and Beck is watching me from down the hall. I'm not sure if he thinks I haven't noticed him giving me the stink eye for 24 hours straight but either way, he's not hiding his disdain.

I think he knows. Maybe he doesn't _know _but he's catching on. He definitely noticed the looks Andre kept giving me yesterday. He's suspicious, but he's not jealous. He's never jealous. He'd have to actually care to be jealous. He'd have to think that the possibility I'd leave him for good even existed, and he doesn't. He's been conditioned that way. He's too good looking to get rejected. Girls don't tell _him _no. I will _always _be there, wanting him back. I will never truly leave.

He's gone the next time I look that direction, but he reappears on my other side in seconds, like magic. He stares at me for a few seconds, looking incredibly confused but a little angry too. I just stare back at him, hoping he makes up his mind soon and either speaks or walks away.

"_You _slept_ with Andre?" _Ah, soAndre must have told him. Boy's got too much of a conscience for his own good.

I try to come up with some sort of response, but _It's none of your business _isn't good enough and I'm too tired to think of anything else.

"Are you losing your mind? What are you doing?" _Am I losing my mind? _Yes. Naturally, wanting to be with someone other than him is a symptom of that.

Andre doesn't tell me to just _get over it_. He's the _only_ person who lets me grieve. It was a heat of the moment thing. It only happened once. I needed somebody who would try to understand, and I counted on him for that.

I try to make those words come out of my mouth but I can't even part my lips. My throat hurts. I'm not sure that I'm completely awake right now.

Beck stares at me, I stare at him. Eventually he walks away and I come back to life. I go to class, I do my work, I even talk a little. I'm okay, for the most part. I act like I'm fine and it doesn't really feel like acting at the moment, but once I'm alone again on my way home from school, I sink into that hole and tears burn my eyes as the bandages fall off and I break apart again.

…

It was a Thursday when he came to me at lunch to remind me of why I'm always wrong. I had decided that I was going to sit at a table by myself at lunch for the rest of eternity, but Andre couldn't let that happen.

Tori hadn't even tried with me since the coffee incident in the hall. I suppose she was just _giving me my space _or something stupid like that, and I was grateful, but at the same time I'd wanted her to keep trying. I wanted her to help me without my having to break down and ask.

"Jade," Andre said as he sat down beside me, "you don't have to sit alone." He tried to make eye contact but his eyes were a little too high. I guess my forehead was less threatening. "Tori doesn't blame you... She probably knows how you feel more than the rest of us do. You don't have to shut her out."

I completely ignored him. I blew him off entirely. It was much too upsetting that she was still willing to try, just not hard enough to do it herself. I didn't want to beg. I wanted to know that I was worth the effort. Apparently I wasn't. She'd tried to make me like her for over a year, stopping at _nothing_, and then, when I _clearly _needed her, she finally realized I just wasn't worth it. What timing.

…

It's Friday and I'm back in Lauren's office while she talks to my lifeless body.

"How about today you tell me what ended your friendship with Tori?" I can hear Lauren talk, but it just goes right through me. I can't comprehend what she's actually saying.

"Jade?" She repeats my name a couple times as I sit there, stiff as a board on her orange couch, but I can't bring myself to move enough to respond to her right away.

"Did something happen?" She asks me a third question and I take a deep breath, slowly pulling reality back to me.

"Yeah," I answer, and I can hear her sigh in relief. "After I left here last week I slept with the only friend I've got left."

"Do you know why?" Her voice is suddenly quiet, soft like she's trying to be cautious.

"Yes. I'm an idiot." That answer's not good enough for her, though, so I spit out some words that might satisfy her. "And I'm lonely...and he's the closest thing I've got to the person I really want to be with." I've been staring at the wall for a while and it takes a moment before her silence hits me. I glance at Lauren and she's not even looking my direction. She's got her eyes closed, but some tears are starting to slip through. Her hand's on the box of kleenex on her desk, but she hasn't taken one yet. She squeezes her eyes shut harder, takes a deep breath, and returns her attention to me.

"I'm so sorry," she apologizes. "My husband and I just found out on Monday that we're expecting our first child together, and the symptoms are really hitting me hard all of a sudden. I guess my hormones are just in overdrive, because I've been really emotional the last few days. I'm so sorry." Suddenly I feel a lot of pressure in my throat, like someone's blowing up a balloon inside of my trachea. I can't breathe, and I just barely choke out a little lie to convince her to move on.

"It's okay." It doesn't work. She rips a tissue from the box and pats her eyes dry with it before she calls me out.

"Jade, what is it?" I consider lying for a moment but my body won't let me, and I start crying - real tears, not my usual hormonal, accidental ones.

"Jade?" She says my name again when I don't answer her, and suddenly her box of tissues is in my face. I take one but I just bunch it up in my fist and open my mouth to spit out the story she's been trying to get from me for a while.

"Tori was kind of...she was the person we all went to when we had a problem, because she was good at fixing things. I thought she was the most irritating person on the planet, but whenever I had a problem...I went to her, and she would just... _set aside _any bad feelings she had about me and help me with whatever I needed her to...and I guess...well, we became friends when she helped me with something kind of big."

"And what was that?"

"I, ummm... I...got pregnant." Her eyes widen a little at my apparent nonchalance, but only for a second, because she doesn't want me to see her look surprised. The notebook that usually sits in her lap is placed on the desk instead, and she pushes it all the way back.

"Did you...have a boyfriend, or was it a-"

"It was my boyfriend's. Well...my ex..." I can't remember if I've ever told her about Beck. He seems like such a minute detail in the mess that my life's been lately that I probably never thought to tell her about him. "We'd been dating for a couple years, and it just...it was an accident. I was really freaked out about it though, so I went to Tori, because I guess I expected her to do something about it...and she just...she let me inside her house and she patted me on the back, and she called a doctor and made an appointment for me, and she even drove me there and everything...which actually probably wasn't the best idea since she was a really bad driver. But she...didn't judge me or anything. She just helped with whatever I wanted her to, and she was there for me more than my boyfriend was, even." Lauren's eyes are bloodshot and a vein is pulsing in her forehead from holding back tears. The fact that even my therapist wants to cry over my life probably isn't a good sign.

"But then...a few months ago, I miscarried, and...I guess I was a lot more..._attached_ than I thought I was, because I didn't take it well, and I took it out on her, and I was just a mess and..." _I still am_, I think for a moment, when she doesn't say anything and just sits there, her face all scrunched up and ugly as she tries not to cry over my misfortune.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She starts apologizing to me and at first I'm not sure if she's sorry for me or for her behavior. "Can you just give me a second? I'm sorry, I'm being really unprofessional, but I'll be right back." Within seconds, I'm left in her overheated, gloomy office by myself. I lie down on my back on the apricot-colored couch and stare at the ceiling tiles above my head.

How long have I been coming here? It feels like forever. Do I feel any better than I did before my first appointment? I can't tell. I don't know what I feel, or if I feel anything at all. My insides feel completely vacant, but at the same time I'm stuffed to the point that my seams are ripping out and I just can't keep it together.

It's been a while since Lauren left. I turn to look at the tiny clock on her desk. Nearly ten minutes have passed. It's almost time for me to leave. Maybe I could just sneak out and go home and take a couple sleeping pills and stay in bed forever. The door creaks and interrupts that fantasy.

"Jade..." She kneels down beside the couch, hand on her flat stomach, before I have the chance to sit up. "I think it might be best, given my _condition_, if you were to see one of my colleagues instead. I want to help you, but I don't know if that's possible for me to do right now. Would you like me to refer you to Debbie? Or maybe Alison. Either one of them is perfectly capable of helping you."

"I, umm..." I can't take her seriously when she's knelt down like that, talking to me like I'm a toddler or a mental patient. "You know, I don't know if therapy is really what I need right now. It's never worked in the past, and I think, really, that I'll just get over it, like I always do."

"Honey," She's speaking so softly I could almost fall asleep. "It's not good to internalize all those hurt feelings like that. Not dealing with them doesn't make them go away, it just pushes them deep down, somewhere where you can ignore them. It's not healthy. It only hurts you more in the end." My lips start trembling and I can feel tears coming, as desperately as I hate to cry. I don't really even feel sad right now. I'm not sure what I'm feeling, but I can't stop myself from crying, and soon tears are spilling from my eyes and then, for the first time in a while, I do know what I'm feeling - humiliation.

"I just...in the past, my old therapists would read me this crap from all their books, lists of foolproof ways to deal with my feelings, and I tried for a while, but none of them really worked. I mean...I thought they might. I tried taking up running, dancing, even kick-boxing, and it didn't help. I tried writing, and I put my feelings down on paper and I thought it was helping because I'd feel better while I was doing it, and I still love doing it, but as soon as I stop I just go right back to feeling the same way again. I...I tried to distract myself with a social life. I forced myself to spend time with all these people that I have nothing in common with, and I started dating, but then I only ended up spending nearly three years of my life evaluating my own self worth based on however my boyfriend was acting toward me at the time, and I...I just can't be treated with a page from a psychology book." My throat feels dry after my little rant and I start to think about just how much I've shared with Lauren. She knows me better than anyone else and I barely even know her.

"All people deal with stress and pain differently," Lauren forces herself into a cross-legged position on the floor beside the couch, and with a straight face, she keeps trying. "Some theories and techniques work for some people, and some don't. The human mind isn't something that we can easily fix." She pauses for a moment, glancing at the clock so she can see that we're running ten minutes over. "How about we try one last thing. You try one thing for me, and come back next week, and if you don't think I've helped you, we can talk about stopping treatment."

I'm weary to find out what Lauren's idea is, but I know that my parents won't allow me to just stop coming here unless she tells them it's okay. I might as well come back next week. Where else can I sit on a comfortable couch and share my secrets with someone I'll never see outside of this room? What could it hurt, really?

"Okay." A smile appears on Lauren's face for a moment as I agree.

"Alright. Jade, I think that you're still grieving like this for a couple of reasons. Mainly, you're holding a lot of things inside that you wish you would've said to Tori while she was alive, right?" I shake my head in agreement just so she'll stop staring at me. "And even when she _was_ alive, I'm sure keeping some of those things inside caused you a great deal of stress. Well...by locking that all in, you are never going to get better. It's not going to go away if you don't let it out. I know that this might be really hard for you to do, but I want you to visit her grave." My throat shrinks down to half its size. I can barely fit a single breath through. I couldn't even go to her funeral. I can't just go wander through a cemetery looking for her. She's completely ruined those places for me.

"I want you to visit her grave, and tell her all those things that you're keeping inside. Maybe write it down first, but go there and try to do that. It might sound stupid, but I think it'll help you. You can't keep it inside, Jade. You can't just sleepwalk through the rest of your life with this...giant wad of pain balled up in your stomach. You have to wake up now."

…

It's Saturday and I've asked Andre to go with me, but he sits in the car while I go to Tori's grave alone. It's in the center of the cemetery, beside a couple graves I can only assume belong to her grandparents. There's a handful of empty plots beside her shiny marble tombstone, saved for the rest of her family, and the grass is just barely growing back over the section of the Earth that they dug up to stuff her beneath. I used to love coming to places like this, but now I'm on the verge of throwing up.

"Tori..." I spit out her name as I kneel in front of her tombstone, but I'm not sure what else to say. I can't take my eyes off the stone. Those years are far too close together. They called her Victoria. She would've hated that. Never in my life had I heard anybody refer to her by her full name, _for a reason, _I would guess.

"I... This is dumb. I'm sorry, I... My stupid shrink made me come here. She thinks talking to your...your smelly, rotting, decomposed body will help me, but I...I think she's the crazy one. Even if I am the one who's sitting here talking to herself..." I close my eyes, trying to remember all the things to say that I'd come up with in bed last night.

"I have...some things I should have told you, and I'm a little late. This is the closest I can get. I umm..." I feel like such an idiot sitting here, and I can't seem to bring myself to say anything more. I start to cry, and soon I'm lying face down on her grave, sobbing with a tiny smile on my face because even in death, she's the only person I can let see me like this.

"I love you." I finally spit something out, throwing the rest of the list out the window because I can no longer remember all the things I'd been wanting to say for her for so long. "I'm sorry I never got the chance to."

A few moments pass. I'm not sure what I expected. To instantly feel better? To get a _response? _Maybe the first one. I wasn't expecting some huge weight to instantly be lifted off my shoulders, but maybe I was expecting to feel a little relief. To be able to just take a breath, and not feel like I'm inhaling water. Instead I get nothing, so without another word, I stand up and I return to the car, where Andre gives me a sad, curious look and restarts the engine.

"You feel better?" He asks me, keeping his eyes on my downturned face instead of the road through the cemetery.

"I don't know."

…

I'm not sure what day it is anymore, but I know it's supposed to be a school day. It's past eight o'clock though, and I'm still in bed. I've been sick to my stomach since my alarm went off at six, and this time my mother approves of me staying home. All I had to do was vomit on her spotless living room carpet before she sent me back to bed with a bucket.

My bag is hanging off the corner of my headboard, and I reach for it because really, I'd rather be at school than at home right now and I need to entertain myself somehow. I look inside and start to pull out my homework, because I'm currently under the delusion that I'm in a good enough condition to do something like that. My books hit the mattress with a thunk, one by one, until I pull out a few sheets of crumpled paper. I straighten them out in my lap, taking in the sight of my name in the top left corner, and the smeared red A+ scribbled next to it.

It's my play. The one I wrote days, weeks, maybe months ago. I don't know what day it is anymore. I don't know what month it is. I can't even remember what I did yesterday.

I'm weary to read it but I find my eyes traveling down the page, taking in each and every word, picturing my main character - brown haired, blue-eyed Ericka - as she steals my life away from me and makes a quick descent into madness in much the same way that I have.

She has lost her very best friend. Not the way that I did. she's much luckier than I. Ericka's best friend Veronica - creative with that one, wasn't I? - has gone missing, but no one seems to care. They all think that Veronica has simply chosen to run away from home; she's the kind of girl who would do that, it seems.

Without the assistance of her terribly unhelpful peers, Ericka begins a dedicated search for her best friend, wandering into the deep dark woods that surround her tiny hometown. She immediately loses her way - because apparently she's a moron - and gets stuck in the forest, wandering around without a clue as to which direction she is headed. With no sense of time, Ericka continuously travels in circles until one night, she veers off one of the same paths she's been taking all along and nearly falls into a deep hole, dug in the center of a clearing. The slick dirt lining this pit has been embedded with thousands of sharp pieces of glass, and the reflection of the moonlight reveals what's lying at the bottom - Veronica. Finally having reached her destination, Ericka helps her still-living friend out of the pit, excited to prove to her family and the rest of her friends that she was _right_.

The play ends with Ericka picking up one of those shards of glass and using it to slit the relieved and exhausted Veronica's pale little throat.

I can't even remember what the assignment was, anymore. I doubt that this play fulfilled it though, and so I wonder about the grade. Mr. Gerrard is one of the toughest teachers at Hollywood Arts - and coincidentally the only one who absolutely refuses to let us call him by anything other than his proper, professional name. It's almost impossible to get an A from him, and so I'm almost positive that I only received such a high grade out of pity.

Why _shouldn't _he pity me? Why shouldn't _everybody _pity me? _I _pity me. Probably even more than everyone else does, actually. It's tragic, really, but what am I to do about it? If I knew how to solve my problems I'd have done that years ago.

…

It's Wednesday - I think - and I'm sitting in Sikowitz's class, where I'm not taking in a single thing he's saying because I still don't feel very good. My head feels empty, light as air, and I could really use something to eat right now but I didn't bring any food with me and I don't feel much like moving.

Beck stands up to join Cat and a couple of the quiet kids at the front of the classroom, but I have no idea what they're supposed to be doing because I'm too busy trying to motivate myself to get up and go get a drink. Eventually I'm successful and I stand up to leave without a word because my throat is too dry to talk. I get a drink from the fountain down the hall from Sikowitz's classroom, but on the way back my vision blurs, and little black specks start appearing everywhere. I make it into the classroom, though it's obvious I'm not feeling well because everybody stops talking and I can just barely hear the sound of Beck's voice as I try to take a seat. I reach out to grab a hold of it but it's a few inches further away than I expected and I completely miss the chair, hitting the ground hard as everything goes black.


End file.
